AP

Tehran, Mar 2: An adviser to Iran’s president on Sunday demanded an apology from a team of visiting Hollywood actors and movie industry officials, saying films such as “300” and “The Wrestler” were “insulting” to Iranians.

Without an apology, members of Iran’s film industry should refuse to meet with representatives from the nine-member team, said Javad Shamaqdari, art and cinema adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“300” portrays the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC, in which a force of 300 Spartans held off the Persian army at a mountain pass in Greece. It angered many Iranians for the way Persians are depicted as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil.

Iranians also criticized “The Wrestler” starring Mickey Rourke as a wrestler preparing for a rematch with his old nemesis, “The Ayatollah.”

In one fight scene, “The Ayatollah” tries to choke Rourke with an Iranian flag before Rourke pulls the flagpole away, breaks it and throws it into the cheering crowd.