On Dec. 22, Tehran police announced that they had arrested 230 individuals in raids on two parties marking the Iranian holiday of Yalda, a celebration of the winter solstice. Police said that the parties were of mixed gender and that the guests were dancing and consuming alcohol.

A lot of people reacted to the announcement on social networks, including filmmaker Abdolreza Kahani, who has directed two films that are banned in Iran. Kahani tweeted, “They say that the subjects and characters in my films promote bad behavior and are unrealistic. So, these people you have just arrested are imaginary?”

Previously, on Dec. 15, the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran had cited a source as saying that the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance had — in a first — “respectfully” asked Kahani verbally not to screen his outlawed 2016 movie "Delighted" in Canada. The movie reportedly tells the story of three young girls in Tehran who have illicit relationships with men.

On Dec. 18, in an interview with BBC Persian, fellow Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, this year’s winner of the top prize in the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival for his movie “A Man of Integrity,” said the security services had told him to expect more interrogations. Rasoulof, who is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, had his passport confiscated at Tehran’s international airport Sept. 15 upon returning from Colorado after his film was screened at the Telluride Film Festival. He was later summoned to the prosecutor's office to answer to charges of “assembly and collusion against national security and propaganda against the state.”