NEW YORK (AP) — Shortly earlier than he was to be flogged and imprisoned for eight years, Mohammad Rasoulof fled Iran.
His weekslong journey would take him from Tehran, by rural Iranian villages, on foot throughout a mountainous borderland and finally to Hamburg, Germany. As arduous and harmful because the journey was, Rasoulof’s travels had an added wrinkle: He was making an attempt to complete a film on the identical time.
Per week after arriving in Germany, Rasoulof would premiere his movie, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” on the Cannes Movie Pageant in France. As he fled, Rasoulof was preoccupied with the film’s edit, which was being carried out in Germany.
“I remember when I was sitting in the car that was driving me to the border,” Rasoulof says. “I had my laptop and I was taking notes and sending them to my editor. The two friends who were taking me kept saying, ‘Put that thing away for a second.’”
In Cannes, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” gained a particular jury prize and Rasoulof was celebrated with a 13-minute standing ovation. The film has since been hailed as probably the greatest of the yr, and arguably its most daring.
Rasoulof made “Sacred Fig” clandestinely in Iran, directing scenes from a separate location to keep away from elevating suspicions. (The opening titles learn: “When there is no way, a way must be made.”) Its story — a devastating household drama set through the 2022 protests that engulfed Iran — would certainly solely add to Rasoulof’s jail sentence.
So in spite of everything of this, how is he feeling? When he lately met with The Related Press for an interview, Rasoulof shrugged. “Ordinary,” he says.
Rasoulof, 52, has a extra mild, bemused presence than a few of his movies would recommend. However how may Rasoulof, after what he’s lived by this yr, really feel something like extraordinary?
“I still haven’t grasped the meaning of exile,” he explains. “I think it will take some time. The feeling of that void has not hit me yet, and I think it may never come.”
Rasoulof has been busy touring from movie competition to movie competition. In September, he and his 24-year-old daughter attended the Telluride competition in Colorado. Many extra such stops have been to come back. Since fleeing Iran, Rasoulof has successfully been immersed on the earth he’s lengthy recognized: cinema.
“Maybe I am living in the world of cinema, and maybe that’s why things are so familiar,” he agrees. “Maybe that’s why I don’t feel I’m in exile.”
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” presently enjoying in theaters, is the Oscar submission from Rasoulof’s adoptive dwelling, Germany. He’s settled in together with his household, grateful for a way the nation has welcomed him. Talking by an interpreter, Rasoulof grants that he’ll in all probability all the time mentally have a bag packed, able to return to Iran ought to the prospect ever come. However what “home” constitutes has modified for him.
“I might be able to change this concept of home for myself,” he says. “I walk on the streets here and I see people of different colors and forms from all over the place, and they all call this place home. So there’s always the chance that one can build something new.”
How oppressive politics can infiltrate the house is central to “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.” It considerations a household of 4: Iman (Missagh Zareh), a lawyer newly appointed to the Revolutionary Court docket in Tehran; his spouse, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) and their two daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki).
Iman is happy with his excessive place, however, when the federal government crackdown on protesters following the dying of Mahsa Amini accelerates, his daughters are more and more at odds with him. After Iman’s gun goes lacking, his spouse and daughters flip into suspects. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” populated with actual cellphone movies from the protests, performs out as an excruciating microcosm of Iranian society.
“It wasn’t like I put those videos in. They just came in,” says Rasoulof. “The reality is that it was through those videos I realized what happened. When the Woman, Life, Freedom movement occurred, I was in prison.”
Rasoulof has spent a number of spells in Tehran’s Evin Jail. In 2010, he was arrested on set for filming with out a allow. In 2022, he was jailed for seven months after pursuing the discharge of one other of Iran’s most outstanding filmmakers, Jafar Panahi. Panahi, who secretly made the movie “No Bears,” was solely launched in 2023 after commencing a starvation strike.
“My windows at home opened to the hills that have the Evin prison in them,” says Rasoulof. “I knew behind those walls many of my friends were sitting.”
Rasoulof, impressed by the braveness of the youthful era, resolved to pour the identical spirit into “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.” Though it wasn’t till Rasoulof’s attraction of his sentence failed that he resolved to flee, he grants that deciding to make “Sacred Fig” primarily sealed his destiny.
“Making this film was part of that decision,” he says. “Although I had made up my mind earlier, because it was such a bitter decision, I was denying it and delaying it, waiting for a miracle to allow me to stay.”
“I would open the fridge to make sure there was nothing there that would go bad,” he provides. “It was a strange circumstance.”
For the movie’s actors and crew members, signing up for the film meant additionally changing into co-conspirators. Everybody knew the dangers. And, like Rasoulof, a lot of them have since left Iran. Rostami and Maleki additionally now reside in Germany. Requested if his collaborators are all presently protected, Rasoulof responds: “No one is safe from the Islamic Republic.”
In his new life, Rasoulof is experiencing freedoms he by no means had in Iran. His movies, for instance, are extensively accessible outdoors his native nation however not in Iran. His prize-winning 2020 drama “There Is No Evil,” about capital punishment in Iran, is banned — although, sarcastically, Rasoulof’s jail guards loved watching it with him from a flash drive.
“I haven’t seen many of my films on a big screen, especially my last film,” he says. “I really want to see ‘There Is No Evil’ on a big screen. A festival in Portugal has promised to take me to see my own film.”
The identify of Rasoulof’s movie comes from his reminiscence of an historic fig tree he as soon as visited on an island within the south of Iran. It’s a tree that, with obvious metaphorical that means for the Iranian authorities, spreads its seeds onto different bushes, killing them and rising of their place.
Rasoulof pulls out his telephone to share a photograph of his house in Tehran. Outdoors a big window, you may see the partitions of Evin operating alongside a craggy hillside. Inside are many houseplants.
“This is my home,” he says. “I have a lot of plants. I really miss my plants. I have a neighbor who takes care of them for me. I actually have a fig tree at home.”
