Iran director in exile says ‘bittersweet’ to rep Germany at Oscars
By AFP
November 24, 2024
Iranian director and producer Mohammad Rasoulof barely managed to attend his latest film's world premiere at the Cannes festival, after daringly fleeing Iran on foot through treacherous mountain passes just days earlier - Copyright AFP SANTIAGO MAZZAROVICH
Andrew MARSZAL
Forced to flee Iran, dissident director Mohammad Rasoulof says it is bittersweet that his latest movie will contend at the Oscars — under the banner of another country.
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” a paranoid thriller that was shot in secret and depicts a family torn apart by Iran’s brutally repressive politics, has earned rave reviews and won many festival prizes, including at Cannes.
But each country can submit just one movie for the best international film Oscar, and in authoritarian countries like Iran, that choice of film is made by state-controlled organizations.
“Of course, it is unimaginable that the Islamic Republic could have submitted a film like this for the Academy Awards,” Rasoulof told AFP.
“In fact, if it were possible for the regime to submit it, the film would not have been made in the first place.”
Instead, the film — out Wednesday in US theaters — has been selected as Germany’s entry at the Academy Awards.
Germany has become an adopted homeland for Rasoulof. The movie was produced by German and French companies.
“Sacred Fig” now has a strong chance of being nominated at the glitzy Hollywood ceremony, and gaining huge global exposure.
“I’m delighted Germany saw the international scope of the film and opened its arms… it’s like shining a torch, a sign to all filmmakers working under duress around the world,” Rasoulof said while promoting the film in Los Angeles this month.
But “it is bittersweet,” he said. “I have got pretty mixed feelings.”
– ‘Pressure’ –
The movie is set during the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests that took place two years ago in Iran.
Those demonstrations were sparked by the death of a young woman after her arrest by “morality police” for violating the clerical regime’s strict dress code.
Hundreds were killed in the ensuing crackdown by security forces, according to human rights groups.
The film follows Iman, an ambitious investigator-judge working for the regime, his wife Najmeh, and their two more curious and rebellious young daughters.
Iman is initially conflicted by having to sign death warrants without evidence. But regime pressure mounts on and corrupts him, driving a wedge through the family — especially after his gun disappears from the home.
Rasoulof barely managed to attend the film’s Cannes premiere in May, after daringly fleeing Iran on foot through treacherous mountain passes just days earlier.
The auteur, who has already spent time in jail, had just been sentenced to eight years in prison and flogging for denouncing the “corruption” and “incompetence” of authorities.
At the Cannes premiere, he held up photos of two lead actors in the film who were trapped in Iran.
One, Soheila Golestani, remains in Iran and faces “the greatest amount of pressure” as court proceedings have again accelerated against the filmmakers in recent weeks, said Rasoulof.
– ‘Filmmaker-in-exile’ –
Iran’s official entry this year is “In The Arms Of The Tree.” State media describes it as a drama that showcases “the beauty of this country” and portrays “the authenticity of the Iranian family.”
Rasoulof admits he has little interest in watching any films “made following the dictates of Iranian censorship.”
“They tend to be quite removed from reality. If you watch them, you feel that your intelligence is being insulted,” he said.
For his latest film, Rasoulof drew on classic Hollywood influences, particularly for a fast-paced, intense and thoroughly creepy final act.
“I was influenced by two films — ‘Straw Dogs’ by Sam Peckinpah, and ‘The Shining’ by Stanley Kubrick,” he said.
“I really enjoyed playing with genres and mixing them in new ways,” he said.
Among his next projects is an animated feature, which will tell the story of Abbas Nalbandian, a radical playwright who “had very momentous experiences around the (Iranian) Revolution.”
The idea to work in animation came out of necessity, four or five years ago, when “I was thinking that I might not be able to film anything on the streets,” recalled Rasoulof. “I was looking for ways to work around that.”
But he is now keen to complete the project, even in exile — a reality that he admits is yet to fully sink in.
“It’s very hard to realize that it’s actually been six months… that I’m a filmmaker-in-exile right now,” said Rasoulof.
“I miss Iran very much.”
By AFP
November 24, 2024
Iranian director and producer Mohammad Rasoulof barely managed to attend his latest film's world premiere at the Cannes festival, after daringly fleeing Iran on foot through treacherous mountain passes just days earlier - Copyright AFP SANTIAGO MAZZAROVICH
Andrew MARSZAL
Forced to flee Iran, dissident director Mohammad Rasoulof says it is bittersweet that his latest movie will contend at the Oscars — under the banner of another country.
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” a paranoid thriller that was shot in secret and depicts a family torn apart by Iran’s brutally repressive politics, has earned rave reviews and won many festival prizes, including at Cannes.
But each country can submit just one movie for the best international film Oscar, and in authoritarian countries like Iran, that choice of film is made by state-controlled organizations.
“Of course, it is unimaginable that the Islamic Republic could have submitted a film like this for the Academy Awards,” Rasoulof told AFP.
“In fact, if it were possible for the regime to submit it, the film would not have been made in the first place.”
Instead, the film — out Wednesday in US theaters — has been selected as Germany’s entry at the Academy Awards.
Germany has become an adopted homeland for Rasoulof. The movie was produced by German and French companies.
“Sacred Fig” now has a strong chance of being nominated at the glitzy Hollywood ceremony, and gaining huge global exposure.
“I’m delighted Germany saw the international scope of the film and opened its arms… it’s like shining a torch, a sign to all filmmakers working under duress around the world,” Rasoulof said while promoting the film in Los Angeles this month.
But “it is bittersweet,” he said. “I have got pretty mixed feelings.”
– ‘Pressure’ –
The movie is set during the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests that took place two years ago in Iran.
Those demonstrations were sparked by the death of a young woman after her arrest by “morality police” for violating the clerical regime’s strict dress code.
Hundreds were killed in the ensuing crackdown by security forces, according to human rights groups.
The film follows Iman, an ambitious investigator-judge working for the regime, his wife Najmeh, and their two more curious and rebellious young daughters.
Iman is initially conflicted by having to sign death warrants without evidence. But regime pressure mounts on and corrupts him, driving a wedge through the family — especially after his gun disappears from the home.
Rasoulof barely managed to attend the film’s Cannes premiere in May, after daringly fleeing Iran on foot through treacherous mountain passes just days earlier.
The auteur, who has already spent time in jail, had just been sentenced to eight years in prison and flogging for denouncing the “corruption” and “incompetence” of authorities.
At the Cannes premiere, he held up photos of two lead actors in the film who were trapped in Iran.
One, Soheila Golestani, remains in Iran and faces “the greatest amount of pressure” as court proceedings have again accelerated against the filmmakers in recent weeks, said Rasoulof.
– ‘Filmmaker-in-exile’ –
Iran’s official entry this year is “In The Arms Of The Tree.” State media describes it as a drama that showcases “the beauty of this country” and portrays “the authenticity of the Iranian family.”
Rasoulof admits he has little interest in watching any films “made following the dictates of Iranian censorship.”
“They tend to be quite removed from reality. If you watch them, you feel that your intelligence is being insulted,” he said.
For his latest film, Rasoulof drew on classic Hollywood influences, particularly for a fast-paced, intense and thoroughly creepy final act.
“I was influenced by two films — ‘Straw Dogs’ by Sam Peckinpah, and ‘The Shining’ by Stanley Kubrick,” he said.
“I really enjoyed playing with genres and mixing them in new ways,” he said.
Among his next projects is an animated feature, which will tell the story of Abbas Nalbandian, a radical playwright who “had very momentous experiences around the (Iranian) Revolution.”
The idea to work in animation came out of necessity, four or five years ago, when “I was thinking that I might not be able to film anything on the streets,” recalled Rasoulof. “I was looking for ways to work around that.”
But he is now keen to complete the project, even in exile — a reality that he admits is yet to fully sink in.
“It’s very hard to realize that it’s actually been six months… that I’m a filmmaker-in-exile right now,” said Rasoulof.
“I miss Iran very much.”
Exiled director Mohammad Rasoulof offers a harrowing and poignant response to the all-consuming repression of Iran’s revolutionary court
bySam Quarton
23-11-2024
Missagh Zareh (left) as the haunted investigative judge, courtesy of Leedsfilm.com
Cinema is a dangerous business in Iran. Filmmakers who dare expose the engulfing control of the Islamic republic’s state repression are often crushed by the very evil they hope to capture. Travel bans, passport seizures, lengthy prison sentences and intimidation become part and parcel of the job. The Seed of the Sacred Fig – Mohammad Rasoulof’s secret picture about a criminal investigator whose careerist motives, state fanaticism and missing gun drive an iron wedge between him and his young daughters – should be a permanent reminder of the risks Iranian filmmakers take for their art. This is yet more essential viewing from Leeds International Film Festival.
In September 2022, tired and harried protesters took to the streets of Tehran under the banner of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, burning their headdresses as a symbol of disgust towards a state that had allowed 22-year-old Mahsa Amini to die in police custody. Amini was another victim of the Iranian Revolutionary Court’s Hijab and Chastity restrictions, theocratic laws recently strengthened by the state’s new power to subject women who breach the dress codes to ’treatment clinics’.
But Rasoulof could do nothing but respect his compatriots’ resolve from the isolation of his cell: the director, along with fellow filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, was already serving a year-long prison sentence. His crime? Imploring security services to lay down their weapons during the deadly Abadan protests earlier that year.
The horrors of such violent state repression would in fact mutate into one of the bloodiest moments in Iran’s recent history, with security services bringing about the death of over 100 protesters in a single day on September 30th, known today as ’Bloody Friday’. Those who survived the ball bearings passed off as non-lethal rounds – protesters were often shot in the neck, stomach and genitals, but particularly the eyes, as the UN’s Fact Finding Mission Chair reports – would bear the ’dissidents’ mark for life.
Debshishu and Smita Patil: Leeds International Film Festival’s spotlight success
bySam Quarton
14 November 2024
A sympathetic jailer
It was this nightmarish reality that Rasoulof would enter as a free man, in February 2023, while armed forces were still imprisoning, torturing and executing those deemed part of an international conspiracy to undermine national security. Those living with whatever freedoms they could salvage must have wondered if the harbingers of state violence have a conscience.
After a clandestine conversation with a sympathetic jailer, Rasoulof knew the answer: the guard, suicidal at the prospect of enforcing more cruelty on others, could not bear tell his family what he does for a living. One need not squint to see how this harrowing and enlightening encounter would form the basis for The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Rasoulof’s study of a family torn apart by their father’s unthinkable, state-ordered actions.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig germinates
Iman – played with haunted vacancy by Missagh Zareh – had thought himself a just lawman, always fair in his 20 years as an ’expert’. But when promoted as an investigating judge, an essential stepping stone to the bench of the revolutionary court, the father of two finds himself tipping the scales of justice at the state’s will. Hundreds of death warrants begin to cross Iman’s desk, though his workload is easier than ever: things work differently here; don’t ask questions; just sign.
Yes, the times are a-changin’. Not just for Iman, who is learning the true weight of Azrael’s scythe. But also Najmeh, the materialist wife living in secret fear of her husband’s wrath, not merely for herself but their two children, Sana and Zervan (Mahsa Rostami), whose feminist views, longing for nail polish and educated friends are viewed as an imminent threat to the family’s survival.
It is here the seed of the fig that can engulf entire trees begins to germinate. Through Rasoulof’s patient and calculated authorship, we see Iman’s fanatical devotion calcify into an unmovable object, with the family’s civil liberties being rolled back inch by inch: friends are banned from coming over; neighbours are to be treated with suspicion; ’leaks’ must be stopped at all costs. There’s a horror film kineticism that stalks the hallways of the tiny apartment, a feeling some unseen enemy must be evaded, best observed through Najmeh’s attempts to hide their daughter’s friend from Iman’s paranoid gaze.
23-11-2024
Missagh Zareh (left) as the haunted investigative judge, courtesy of Leedsfilm.com
Cinema is a dangerous business in Iran. Filmmakers who dare expose the engulfing control of the Islamic republic’s state repression are often crushed by the very evil they hope to capture. Travel bans, passport seizures, lengthy prison sentences and intimidation become part and parcel of the job. The Seed of the Sacred Fig – Mohammad Rasoulof’s secret picture about a criminal investigator whose careerist motives, state fanaticism and missing gun drive an iron wedge between him and his young daughters – should be a permanent reminder of the risks Iranian filmmakers take for their art. This is yet more essential viewing from Leeds International Film Festival.
In September 2022, tired and harried protesters took to the streets of Tehran under the banner of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, burning their headdresses as a symbol of disgust towards a state that had allowed 22-year-old Mahsa Amini to die in police custody. Amini was another victim of the Iranian Revolutionary Court’s Hijab and Chastity restrictions, theocratic laws recently strengthened by the state’s new power to subject women who breach the dress codes to ’treatment clinics’.
But Rasoulof could do nothing but respect his compatriots’ resolve from the isolation of his cell: the director, along with fellow filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, was already serving a year-long prison sentence. His crime? Imploring security services to lay down their weapons during the deadly Abadan protests earlier that year.
The horrors of such violent state repression would in fact mutate into one of the bloodiest moments in Iran’s recent history, with security services bringing about the death of over 100 protesters in a single day on September 30th, known today as ’Bloody Friday’. Those who survived the ball bearings passed off as non-lethal rounds – protesters were often shot in the neck, stomach and genitals, but particularly the eyes, as the UN’s Fact Finding Mission Chair reports – would bear the ’dissidents’ mark for life.
Debshishu and Smita Patil: Leeds International Film Festival’s spotlight success
bySam Quarton
14 November 2024
A sympathetic jailer
It was this nightmarish reality that Rasoulof would enter as a free man, in February 2023, while armed forces were still imprisoning, torturing and executing those deemed part of an international conspiracy to undermine national security. Those living with whatever freedoms they could salvage must have wondered if the harbingers of state violence have a conscience.
After a clandestine conversation with a sympathetic jailer, Rasoulof knew the answer: the guard, suicidal at the prospect of enforcing more cruelty on others, could not bear tell his family what he does for a living. One need not squint to see how this harrowing and enlightening encounter would form the basis for The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Rasoulof’s study of a family torn apart by their father’s unthinkable, state-ordered actions.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig germinates
Iman – played with haunted vacancy by Missagh Zareh – had thought himself a just lawman, always fair in his 20 years as an ’expert’. But when promoted as an investigating judge, an essential stepping stone to the bench of the revolutionary court, the father of two finds himself tipping the scales of justice at the state’s will. Hundreds of death warrants begin to cross Iman’s desk, though his workload is easier than ever: things work differently here; don’t ask questions; just sign.
Yes, the times are a-changin’. Not just for Iman, who is learning the true weight of Azrael’s scythe. But also Najmeh, the materialist wife living in secret fear of her husband’s wrath, not merely for herself but their two children, Sana and Zervan (Mahsa Rostami), whose feminist views, longing for nail polish and educated friends are viewed as an imminent threat to the family’s survival.
It is here the seed of the fig that can engulf entire trees begins to germinate. Through Rasoulof’s patient and calculated authorship, we see Iman’s fanatical devotion calcify into an unmovable object, with the family’s civil liberties being rolled back inch by inch: friends are banned from coming over; neighbours are to be treated with suspicion; ’leaks’ must be stopped at all costs. There’s a horror film kineticism that stalks the hallways of the tiny apartment, a feeling some unseen enemy must be evaded, best observed through Najmeh’s attempts to hide their daughter’s friend from Iman’s paranoid gaze.
Mahsa Rostami (centre) staring down her on-screen father as the fearless Zervan, courtesy of Leedsfilm.com
The chants penetrate the walls
To his family, Iman has become a feared supreme leader of the household, a god among men whose word is final and whose presence is rare. The service pistol the father foolishly hides in a drawer acts as a physical testament to his divine right – although it will be stolen in a sudden, dizzying coup de théâtre. But when images of bloodied protesters and terrorising security forces are emblazoned on the daughters’ phones, real footage taken from the Amini demonstrations, Iman watches his regime begin to wobble.
Dissident slogans transcend screens and penetrate the walls; residents from the same apartment block chant “death to theocracy”; women in public without hijabs become an increasingly visible presence.
But it is at the dinner table – a sacrosanct space for the father’s patriarchal authority, when Iman denigrates the protesters as “sluts who want to walk naked in the street” – where we see judges too aren’t immune from the power of dissenting voices. Zervan, with gladiatorial furor, beats away talk of enemy plots, conspiracy theories and misogyny to ask her father something simple and poignant: “A girl my age was killed for her hijab. Why?” If Rostami’s anger feels lived-in and real, I would bet the farm it is.
Cinema or secret military operation?
Cinematographer Pooyan Aghababaei achieves in the film’s alleyways and bustling urban scenes a near-tangible paranoia that is also reflective of the incredibly dangerous risks undertaken by the cast and crew.
Rasoulof, who had already served a prison term for shooting without a permit, knew before making his latest picture it would resemble a covert military operation rather than a film production. And that’s exactly what it became: 70 days of exhausting shoots; small groups operating with very limited resources; no cellphones; anxieties running through the roof. Even the director himself would not be present when the clapperboard hit: liaisons between tech, design and cast members were essential in communicating the film’s intended image. The threat to life and liberty was always lurking in the shadows.
Zervan receiving the brunt of her mother’s fear, courtesy of Leedsfilm.com
Final Thoughts
And now, just over six months after the film was announced as a contender at Cannes, most of those who worked on it are experiencing legal reprisals. Both Rostami and her on-screen sister, Saterah Maleki, have left the country in fear of state retribution, and are joined by Rasoulof, who fled to Germany shortly after receiving a draconian eight year sentence and flogging in May this year.
So as Rasoulof vows to return to Iran and accept his persecution, let us appreciate the price of admission the director and his peers pay for the sake of free expression in an art form we are lucky enough to take for granted. The Seed of the Sacred Fig will live on as a testament to their sacrifice.
Sam Quarton is a Sheffield-based writer, video journalist and content creator who has covered everything from health and technology, politics and communities all the way through to music and the arts. Whether he’s sinking his teeth into news stories, interviews, or long-form copy, he approaches each piece with a clear focus: to gain a deeper perspective on the world and always move the conversation forward.
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