“For the first time, people overcame the culture of keeping things quiet,” he said. They “have come out against lies, against hypocrisy, and they are no longer able to hide their anger.”

His own career mirrors the growing fury. Rasoulof resorted to allegorical stories in earlier work like “White Meadows,” so as not to “directly confront power,” he said. But he eventually felt that was “a form of accepting the tyrannical regime,” he added.

His more recent films, like “Manuscripts Don’t Burn,” based on the government’s attempt to kill prominent writers in the 1990s, are much more direct in its criticism.

Yet his rebellion comes with a price. In 2010, he and the prominent director Jafar Panahi were detained while working on a project related to the 2009 Iranian presidential election and each sentenced to six years in prison. The sentences were later reduced to one year, which neither has served yet. Panahi was banned from filmmaking for 20 years, yet he has made several award-winning movies since.

Rasoulof was held in solitary confinement for eight days and could not communicate with his family, he said. He believed his work could endanger them, so his wife and daughter moved to Germany soon after.

In 2017, his “Man of Integrity” won the Un Certain Regard Award at the Cannes Film Festival. When he returned to Iran, authorities confiscated his passport, charged him with propaganda against the state and in July sentenced him to a year in prison. (Cannes and others issued a statement condemning the sentence soon after.)