Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof pays a high price of the art of resistance
Protest is much more than just a theme for the rising film industry in Iran.
Just as Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof completed shooting his 10th film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, in April last year he was forced to flee his home in Tehran where he faced an eight-year prison sentence and lashings (flogging) for various offences.
The authorities were also becoming aware of his highly contentious film and his sentence could have been extended by another five years, had he stayed. (He’d spent a year in prison in 2010 for filming without a permit and had recently served a seven-month term for being critical of the government.)
“I know what happens in prison and had spoken to many prisoners, including those who had been sentenced to death,” Rasoulof notes during our Zoom interview from Hamburg, where he now lives in exile.
“I also met people who knew how I could get across the border – that was the blessing of imprisonment! They helped me to leave and go to a place where I was safe. Then I was able to walk a long distance and cross the border into a country that I don’t want to name.” He arrived in Germany 28 days after leaving Tehran.
Does he feel like a hero, given his brave escape, which included trudging over a mountain?
“No, I just feel that I’m a director who’s been through hell to be able, with the help of my friends and collaborators, to make a film,” he says. “I’m still struggling. Resisting the censorship and the repressive system has a toll. You have to pay for it, and I have been no exception. Like many other filmmakers, many other artists, my life has been made difficult, but that was the price to pay for my freedom.”
The 52-year-old’s film, a German-French production, has just been Oscar-nominated for Germany in the international film category. It was previously nominated in this year’s Golden Globes, won best international co-production in the French Lumieres and now has been selected in the final list for the British BAFTAs and the American Critics’ Choice awards.
In Cannes in May The Seed of the Sacred Fig won the Special Jury prize after receiving a 13-minute standing ovation. Rasoulof had just arrived in Europe and, incredibly, the film was completed in time as he had been sending footage to his editor, Andrew Bird, in Hamburg.
In recent months he has travelled extensively to promote the film. “I never thought I’d be going to the Oscars because in Iran everything is so controlled,” he says. “But when you live under a totalitarian regime, any help, any access to an audience and to a way of making your voice heard and your situation known by world audiences is precious and should be appreciated and followed.
“So I won’t complain about the travelling, even if on a personal level, I wish I wouldn’t have had to take part in so many public events and do so much publicity, especially for this film that left me quite exhausted.”
Since he was banned from leaving Iran for seven years, Rasoulof had been unable to attend the 2020 Berlin Film Festival when his previous film, There is No Evil, about the death penalty in Iran, won the top prize, the Golden Bear. It went on to win the Sydney Film Prize at the 2021 Sydney Film Festival.
The inspiration for his new film, about the younger generation triggering change in Iran, came during his recent stint in prison, when talking to a prison guard.
“He said to me, ‘every day, when I walk into this prison I look at this huge heavy door and I wonder when I would hang myself in front of the door’. He said to me, ‘all my children ask me every day, what on earth are you doing?’. He gave me a pen and I started to write a story about a family with deep divisions.”
Rasoulof also realised he had never made a film focusing on Iranian women and he wanted to rectify that. He largely directed remotely as it would have been too dangerous for him to be on set.
Set during the Woman Life Freedom protests following the 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini, The Seed of the Sacred Fig focuses on a family whose father Iman (Misagh Zare) is promoted to become a judge in the Revolutionary Guard Court, delivering and enforcing sentences including death. Initially his wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), is hugely supportive, but when his handgun goes missing, he suspects that his two daughters have taken it. He goes into a frenzy, even having them interrogated by a colleague. Eventually his wife comes to her daughters’ defence and the women take him on.
“I find inspiration for characters in the people I observe in Iranian society, and I would say that these three women are different types of characters belonging to three different generations,” Rasoulof explains. “The mother has only one concern, which is to preserve her family and to maintain their security. She’s like a tightrope walker at times, as she can go more on one side or the other.
“The older daughter (Rezvan, played by Mahsa Rostami), because she’s less aware of the digital revolution and the world of her generation, can sometimes tend to be like her mother in her attitudes and the way she dresses – until because of what happens to her friend (Sadaf, played by Niousha Akhshi) and what she sees on social media, she has an epiphany and decides to join the movement that is more embodied by her younger sister.
“The younger daughter (Sana, played by Setareh Maleki) is very aware of what is going on around her, watching everything and everyone, and she also feels very close to the friend. As soon as her friend is hurt and attacked, she realises that the only way to confront the power is to seize their tools to be able to fight it.”
The three young female actors who appear in the film left Iran around the same time as Rasoulof, while Golestani stayed behind and is now facing the wrath of the law. For the first time in their careers, all four women did not wear the full hijab in the film, despite the regime’s decree that they wear it on screen.
“The women’s movement in Iran has had a long history, and many people have been fighting and struggling for years,” Rasoulof says. “What we saw two years ago was only the last stage of it with a new generation, and their ways of expression have been very decisive. This movement will not stop, and I don’t doubt that it will sooner or later be triumphant.” He includes footage of the protests in his film.
Two of Iran’s most famous female actors, Zar Amir and Golshifteh Farahani (who played alongside Chris Hemsworth in the Extraction movies), had trouble with the Iranian authorities and now live in France. Amir came to Australia to make Noora Niasari’s film, Shayda, which shares similar women-oriented Iranian themes.
“I haven’t seen this film and would like to,” the genial Rasoulof says. Will he come to Australia? “I’ve been invited for my film’s release, but I don’t know yet. I know Zar and Golshifteh, and they are very brave. I really admire them for their persistence in fighting the Iranian dictatorship and also for defending and being part of the Iranian women’s movement, and making their voices heard all over the world. Many Iranian artists and individuals are being very active and efficient in making people conscious about the importance of this moment.”
One advantage of his exile is that he’s able to see his daughter, who has long lived in Hamburg. “I’ve been travelling so much lately that I’m hardly ever at home and can enjoy family life and see my daughter, but at least we are free and we can enjoy each other’s closeness here in Germany whenever I’m here. We’re not prevented from seeing each other as it used to be, when I could not travel out of Iran and she could not really allow herself to come and see me, because she wasn’t sure to be able to leave again. The lives of the relatives of the resistance and art people who are struggling with the government in Iran are made very difficult too.”
Thankfully, he left before any lashings could take place. Zar Amir had faced them too, though likewise fled beforehand. “Unfortunately, it’s quite a common way of punishing and repressing people in Iran,” Rasoulof says. “Just yesterday we heard about a woman who was walking on the street, and she was annoyed by a motorcycle rider and spoke back to him. Instead of arresting him, they arrested the woman and she was lashed, and they released her after the lashing. It’s a patriarchal system.”
Still, he hopes to return to Iran one day. “From the moment I was crossing the border, I was already thinking about reconnecting with the people who are extremely inspiring for me, not only for my creation, but for my life, for my existence. I feel extremely committed and close to my country. But at the same time I cannot forget it’s in the hands of a very repressive, brutal, totalitarian system which has no consistency except in fighting and repressing its people who criticise it.”
Eventually he will work on one of several projects he has in mind from abroad. “But first, I need to settle down a little bit and realise what I’ve been through, and what my new situation is. Freedom is something that I’ve never had, but with this new freedom I have new restrictions, because I cannot work in my country, in my culture. So in a way censorship follows me wherever I go and with what I do. But I have always found creative ways of putting up with restrictions.”
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The other Oscar contenders
The most prominent Oscar-nominated film in the international category, French contender Emilia Perez – a Golden Globes winner shot mostly in Spanish and in a studio near Paris, although largely set in Mexico – has scored 13 nominations, including best film. This is a record for a non-English language film, and three more than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2001 and Roma in 2018. When Emilia Perez premiered in Cannes the trans musical/gangster story had critics roaring with appreciation. If it wins the international award, it will become the first French film to do so since Indochine in 1993.
Walter Salles’s real-life Brazilian abduction story, I’m Still Here, has also been nominated for best film as well as best international feature, and has built up strong momentum among Oscar voters. It caused a sensation when its star, Fernanda Torres, won the Best Actress Golden Globe. She has also scored a best actress Oscar nomination, repeating her mother Fernanda Montenegro’s historic 1999 achievement for Salles’s Central Station, which also won the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear and Montenegro for best actress.
Other international contenders are the dark Danish baby-killing drama, The Girl with the Needle, and the Latvian dialogue-free animation, Flow, which follows a cat and other species trying to survive a flood.
The Girl with the Needle was released in Australia last year; Emilia Perez is currently on release; The Seed of The Sacred Fig releases in cinemas on February 27; I’m Still Here on March 13; Flow on March 20
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