Investing an expansive social drama within the intimacy of a family, Rasoulof says, was a way of reflecting the contrast between the public face and private lives of the Islamic Republic.
“There’s a very strong contradiction between what they say and the ideas they think they embrace and the reality of their lives,” says Rasoulof. “I’ll give you a very absurd example.”
Rasoulof recalls an encounter when he was in prison two years ago. He had fallen ill and was taken to a hospital where revolving soldiers stood guard beside his bed. His captors, though, were eager to watch Rasoulof’ s prize-winning 2020 drama “There Is No Evil,” about capital punishment in Iran. It’s banned in Iran.
“I had to watch ‘There Is No Evil’ every evening,” he says, laughing. “They were so excited to be there with a filmmaker. And they knew that I had made a film about prison guards, so they wanted to watch it. They had found a flash drive and every night, I had no choice in the film I wanted to watch.”
“What’s going on now in Iran and the change that’s about to happen will come from these families, from the inside,” adds Rasoulof. Already wrestling with social unrest and international sanctions, Iran is currently mourning the death of President Ebrahim Raisi, who was interred Thursday after being killed in a helicopter crash.
Although Iranian authorities have not publicly acknowledged Rasoulof’s sentence, the filmmaker’s attorney said he was recently sentenced to prison and flogging for films and public statements called “examples of collusion with the intention of committing a crime against the country’s security.”
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” was shot clandestinely in Iran, with a small cast and crew. Before the movie was edited, some actors also fled Iran. But others who helped make the film have been interrogated and their families summoned for questioning, the director said earlier. The cinematographer’s office was raided.
One of Rasoulof’s greatest frustrations in fleeing Iran was that he had to leave his unfinished film with his collaborators abroad.
“I called them and told them that they would have to take care of the film,” the filmmaker says, “whatever happened.”
About two weeks ago, Rasoulof arrived in Germany and rushed to finish work on the final print before sending it to the festival.