The newly exiled Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, who fled his home country last month ahead of taking his new film to the Cannes festival, has spoken of drawing from his real life encounters with the repressive justice system in the Islamic Republic.
Rasoulof, who fled Iran after receiving an eight-year prison sentence for making the film The Seed of the Sacred Fig, also made an impassioned call for resistance directed at the film-makers and artists he left behind.
“My only message to Iranian cinema is: don’t be afraid,” he said, adding that he believes the leadership of the theocratic state is afraid. “They want to discourage us – but don’t let yourself be intimidated. They have no other weapon but fear. We have to fight for a dignified life in our country.”
Speaking after the premiere of The Seed of the Sacred Fig, screened on the last day of the 77th annual film festival on the Côte d’Azur, Rasoulof gave details of his knife-edge decision to flee the country.
“I had counted on the slow pace of the legal administration in Iran to be able to finish this film,” he said, explaining that he had sent footage out to Europe for editing while he awaited an appeal verdict and sentence. “We learned that the existence of the film was known to the authorities and that the secret service might arrest members of the team. So I had to think whether I wanted to be arrested or to leave Iran and join the cultural Iran that now exists outside the country.
“It took two hours. I paced around my house and said goodbye to my many plants. It was not an easy decision. It is still not easy. It so happens I could see the wall of the prison from my house. So I looked at the prison and I looked at the mountain, and I left all my possessions and walked out of my house.”
Joining two of his actors, Setareh Maleki and newcomer Mahsa Rostami, in front of the Cannes press, Rasoulof emphasised his debt to the rest of the cast and crew inside Iran, including those who face state recriminations. His “heart was with them”, he said, adding: “I think about them all the time. I hope the restrictions they are suffering will be lifted soon.”
Rasoulof, 52, is already known for There is No Evil, which won the top prize at the Berlin film festival four years ago, and for A Man of Integrity, which earned him plaudits at Cannes in 2018 but also resulted in a string of travel restrictions, prison sentences and film-making bans in Iran. In 2023 he was unable to take up an invitation to join the Cannes competition jury because he was under detention.
The idea for The Seed of the Sacred Fig, he said, sprang from “years of confrontation with the secret services and with cultural censorship”. Rasoulof recounted how, during a previous stint in prison, he and fellow film director Jafar Panahi tried to follow the demonstrations going on in the streets outside their cell.
The film is set during the 2022 protests in Iran and includes real demonstration footage as it follows a family of four with a father who works in the justice system. His daughters are played by Rostami and Maleki.
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His new film, shot clandestinely to avoid state censorship, received rapturous support from the audience at Cannes as the director held aloft images of the missing actors unable to join him to see their film compete for the coveted Palme d’Or prize, which will be awarded this evening.
Maleki said she had not been scared to take part in the film, and she saluted her director’s bravery. “Who else would have this courage to make this film?” she said, adding that she was not ashamed to have also been forced to leave her home country: “It is the Islamic Republic that should be ashamed, not me.”
Rasoulof said that, in depicting characters inspired by Iranian prison warders and security guards, he had tried to understand the thinking of loyalists. “It is the individuals who concern me. What is their mindset? They are human beings, so what can justify their way of thinking?” he asked. “How did they get to that point? How do they persuade themselves?”