Shortly before he was to be flogged and imprisoned for eight years, Mohammad Rasoulof fled Iran. His weekslong journey would take him from Tehran, through rural Iranian villages, on foot across a mountainous borderland and ultimately to Hamburg, Germany.
FILE - Director Mohammad Rasoulof poses for a portrait photograph for the film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” at the 77th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, on May 23 2024. This image released by Neon shows Soheila Golestani, from left, Mahsa Rostami, and Setareh Maleki in a scene from “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
“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.” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” currently playing in theaters, is the Oscar submission from Rasoulof’s adoptive home, Germany. He’s settled in with his family, grateful for how the country has welcomed him. Speaking through an interpreter, Rasoulof grants that he’ll probably always mentally have a bag packed, ready to return to Iran should the chance ever come. But what “home” constitutes has changed for him.
“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.” “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.”
In his new life, Rasoulof is experiencing freedoms he never had in Iran. His films, for example, are widely available outside his native country but not in Iran. His prize-winning 2020 drama “There Is No Evil,” about capital punishment in Iran, is banned — though, ironically, Rasoulof’s prison guards enjoyed watching it with him from a flash drive.
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