In April 2024, as he was secretly completing his eighth feature film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Mohammad Rasoulof, the Iranian writer-director, received word that his final legal appeal had been rejected: he was now faced with an eight-year prison sentence (and attendant lashing) for producing “propaganda against the system,” a charge that had been filed against him in 2022. In a series of events that seem all too fittingly cinematic, Rasoulof was forced to drop everything and flee the country on foot, through mountainous passages, escorted by an assortment of grey-market smugglers. He reached Hamburg on May 10, four weeks after fleeing his home country. A fortnight later, he was in France, where he would witness The Seed of the Sacred Fig, screened at the Cannes Film Festival, win the Special Jury Prize.

From the start of his career, Rasoulof was associated with that cohort of Iranian auteurs whose films, made within the system, tested the limits of the censors’ tolerance. His early features, such as Iron Island (2005), which won the top prize at the Thirty-Sixth International Film Festival of India, can be read as allegorical critiques of the Islamic Republic. Harassment and intimidation by the authorities inevitably followed their release. In 2010 Rasoulof, along with fellow director Jafar Panahi, was arrested, nominally for filming without a permit, which reflected the increasingly repressive political environment that followed the controversial and contested Iranian presidential election of 2009. Both men were given six-year prison sentences that were subsequently reduced upon appeal, but which prohibited the directors from filmmaking.

“At some point, you cannot distinguish between what benefits you and ideology.”

Like Panahi, Rasoulof continued to make movies surreptitiously, and in that setting his cinematic tone shifted: allegory was left behind. The incendiary Manuscripts Don’t Burn (2013), based on the state-sponsored murder of scores of Iranian intellectuals, was not only shot in secret but withheld its credits in order to protect its cast and crew. A Man of Integrity (2017), which follows a goldfish farmer in a village in the north of Iran through his encounters with a shadowy network of bribery and graft, portrayed contemporary Iran as an inherently corrupt society. (Despite its distinct local features, global audiences will recognize Integrity as a classic “urban corruption” drama that features parasitic local potentates nefariously pulling the strings of municipal political machines.) There is No Evil (2020), a compendium of four distinct stories about the ways the death penalty disfigures a society, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Not surprisingly, Rasoulof’s legal troubles only mounted after that film’s release, and he was subjected to multiple arrests, draconian travel restrictions, and guilty verdicts with looming prison sentences.

Indeed, the director was in the midst of an eight-month stint behind bars when events in Iran provided the inspiration for The Seed of the Sacred Fig. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement erupted in September 2022, after the twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested—and almost certainly beaten to death—by Iran’s notorious morality police for wearing her headscarf improperly. The incident and almost transparently clumsy efforts by the state to cover it up led to widespread protests, the violent suppression of which by security forces left hundreds dead (raw footage of the bloody crackdown is integrated into the film).

A riveting and brilliantly crafted film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig tells this story through the lens of a family drama. Iman, the patriarch (Missagh Zare), has just secured a promotion within Iran’s judicial system, which requires him to sign off on the endless guilty verdicts being handed down to the protestors; his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) is devout and supportive, but also acutely aware of the needs and challenges of her coming-of-age daughters Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki). Things become complicated when a university friend of Rezvan, caught up in the protests, is seriously injured and subsequently arrested (desperate attempts to learn of her fate yield the explanation that she is likely being held in solitary confinement, and “will be released when she confesses to the camera”). From there, the situation becomes more complicated still when the gun given to Iman for his own protection goes missing, a danger only accentuated when his identity is revealed online, forcing the family to flee the city—and the father to wonder which of the three women has betrayed him.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is now playing in selected theaters. On January 10, I had the opportunity to interview Rasoulof via Zoom (with the assistance of interpreter Sheida Dayani).

—Jonathan Kirshner


Jonathan Kirshner: The Seed of the Sacred Fig seems to unfold in three general movements, with the first movement starting with the consequence of the emergence of the protests; then there is the private crisis of the loss of the gun; and finally the public crisis of the revelation of the information about the family’s whereabouts and what follows from that. Do you see the film moving in that same general rhythm?

 

Mohammad Rasoulof: You could perhaps make that division, although I think the story is more intertwined: each part is the continuation of the other part, and each reflects on how the characters relate to one another.

 

JK: Speaking of the characters, what caught my attention here and also in some of your earlier films is the extent to which the women characters and their decisions really drive the narratives.

 

MR: I believe this goes back to the role that women play in Iranian society. Many of the social developments in Iran have been started by women, and they will come to fruition through women.

 

JK: This movie takes place in a very specific place and time, obviously inspired by actual events, but as a viewer I was struck by the elements of it that seem very universal, as well.

 

MR: That’s absolutely correct. I think it is only the context of the film that is a very specific time, but to me the film is about devotion. And now it is me who is going to divide it into three parts. It starts with devotion. Devotion leads to prejudice and bias. And prejudice and bias lead to violence.

 

JK: That’s fascinating. On a simpler level, and perhaps that’s where I dwell, I was really struck by the universality of the generational conflict in this film, which reminded me of upheavals in American history, in particular those of the late 1960s.

 

MR: Yes, I believe that this is also an important part of the story, because the drama of the story and film is created by the split that emerges in the family between the two generations.

 

JK: I want to turn briefly to the adults in the household. Iman strikes me as almost a character in a Russian novel: he’s constantly saying he won’t do something, and then he does it. He won’t sign off on a guilty verdict without studying the case first. He won’t subject his family to interrogation. These are very big decisions, and in each of these cases, rather quickly, he comes around to doing those things. I wondered if this was intended to make a larger statement about authoritarian followership: that it’s not just that authoritarians need to give orders but that people need to be permissive in their behavior, willing to do things that they initially state they are unwilling to do.

 

MR: When you become a part of a machine, it becomes very difficult for you to remove yourself from that system or to change your position in it. And at some point, you cannot distinguish between what benefits you and ideology. Your beliefs become so close to what benefits you that you might think you’re following your own ideals and beliefs, but in fact, you’re only holding on to what is advantageous. And just as easily, your consciousness becomes suffocated under your advantages. You can forget about many things and continue being and existing in this system just for the sake of a dishwasher.

 

JK: Speaking of that dishwasher [the family is enthusiastic about the material benefits that will accompany Iman’s promotion, including moving to a larger apartment with more modern amenities] invites the opportunity to shift over to Najmeh, who for me was probably the most fascinating character, in that my own perception of her changes over the course of the film. When we first meet her, she almost seems like a Lady Macbeth–type figure, pushing her husband forward, almost like the strength behind the throne. But as the movie unfolds, we come to the revelation that she is motivated to shield her daughters from the worst aspects of Iman’s character, and this makes us rethink everything we’ve learned about her from the start.

 

MR: I don’t think you could say it’s one or the other. Najmeh rather feels herself in a union with the husband and with one common goal with the husband: to keep the family together. So in some cases, she’s helping her husband find his strength and hold himself up. When he’s not feeling well about himself, she puts a white shirt on him and tells him that he’s not to be blamed and he’s only following orders. On the other hand, she sometimes threatens the children and tells them to be careful not to hurt their father by having the wrong behavior. At the same time, she’s worried about her daughter’s friend, and asks her husband whether or not he can find some news about her.

“I don’t think that you can undermine the power of what films do.”

She’s like a person who is tightrope walking and the entire time has to create and keep her balance. Her entire belief is that she has to keep her family together because this is what gives her the biggest sense of security. So she’s trying to avoid any kind of friction between the daughters and the father. But in the end, she realizes the violence is so deep within the father, and the human aspects are so absent within him, that she can no longer do anything for him. In fact, throughout the story we witness how the father gets out of touch with himself and how his connection to himself is interrupted. Even when the younger daughter tries to remind him who he was, by broadcasting sounds from their past, he does not hear anything.

 

JK: With regard to the turning point, or the change in Najmeh’s understanding of what is happening to Iman’s character, I was very curious to hear more about the interrogation sequence [in which the father arranges for his own family to be secretly questioned], which struck me as crucial and a turning point. I’m curious to know about the choices you made in shooting those scenes, which to me represented the moment in which Najmeh’s attitude toward what is going on must fundamentally change.

 

MR: I really wanted to revisit and make references to the interrogations and the pressures that I’ve been under myself throughout the years. All these moments were moments that I have experienced with every one of my cells. Sitting on that chair, blindfolded, with the interrogator behind me, is a moment that I have experienced myself. I will never forget the sound of the pen in the silence of the interrogation room. It was the pen with which the interrogator was writing his questions. I believe the importance of the film’s interrogation sequence is in the amount of violence that’s in it. The violence of a father taking his children to interrogation. And at the same time, in order to convince himself, he thinks nothing of it and pretends that it’s as ordinary as going to a therapist. In fact, this is a moment in which we are witnessing prejudice. It’s a moment in which no one wants to think differently about their ideals and only sees themselves and their ideals.

At the same time, this also had a historical reference for me. I had heard all along during the course of the 1979 revolution of the Islamic Republic how ideology played a role in fathers having a hand in the executions of their sons, how brothers had a role in the executions of their brothers. So this, for me, had a reference to that point in history. I know fathers who revealed the location of their own daughters and made them go to jail.

 

 

JK: I was also wondering if there was something more pointed there as well, because at first, the interrogator is presented to us as someone who is a master at his craft, but he turns out to make a basic mistake in his understanding of what is going on: he fingers the wrong suspect. I assumed this was one way of subverting what some people might say more generally in such instances: “Well, the confession was coerced but nevertheless they did get to the bottom of it.” Here, we have the master interrogator and the interrogation process but the guy just gets it flat wrong in terms of who he decides is guilty of what he’s investigating.

 

 MR: Yes, it was important for me to show how they [the interrogators and government officials] confirm each other’s mistakes and hold false beliefs about one another, continuing to perpetuate and insist on them. All the scenes and references point to the fact that it could be the older daughter who hid the gun. The conversations beforehand, the scenes the night before: everything leads to us, and them, thinking it was the older daughter.

More generally, the role that the Gen Z played in the Women Life Freedom movement was very inspiring to me. I believe it wasn’t just me taken aback but many people who followed the developments in Iran were very much surprised by the role that the Gen Z played in Iranian society. The intelligence and the brilliance that the newer generation has shown by having a presence on social media and on the internet has taken the authorities by surprise and has changed many things.

It’s important for you to know that in the judicial system of Iran, based on the same mistakes that people make, convictions such as execution are issued, so people are executed for the wrong reasons and the wrong people are executed. In order to write that scene, I referred to many books about how interrogations are done and how the suspect is determined, and I also watched a lot of YouTube videos that explained how interrogators determine who the suspect is. In the end I concluded that there was not a particular way to go—there was not a particular method in which you could find who the real culprit is. Perhaps it’s for that reason that in advanced judicial systems it is still the confessions of individuals that have a lot of importance.

 

JK: Speaking about your work more broadly, I was wondering if you had any thoughts about the relationship between this movie and two of your earlier films, Manuscripts Don’t Burn and A Man of Integrity.

 

MR: If there is a relationship it’s really unconscious for me. I don’t go back and revisit my films. When a film is done, it’s done. I don’t usually become conscious of the relationships between my films. But there are certain ideas that I follow in my work. For instance, Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil”—you can find traces of that in each of my films.

 

JK: One of the many things that’s fascinating to me is that although Manuscripts Don’t Burn is also inspired by specific events, and local events, even though I retain the view that your current film is very universalist, those two earlier films strike me as anti-authoritarian in a way that could apply in almost any setting, whereas The Seed of the Sacred Fig is more sharply directed at theocracy. To me, that was a noticeable difference.

 

MR: Yes. First of all, many of my ideas in this film come from my lived experiences in Iran. But at the same time I believe that what happens in a theocracy is not very different than what happens in a non-religious authoritarian system such as the USSR or the current Russia or China. And you see that today’s best friends of the Islamic Republic are Russia and China. So many of these elements that happen in a theocracy can be found in non-religious dictatorships as well.

 

JK: Again speaking of your work more generally, I’m very curious as to who the filmmakers are that influenced you, both within Iran and globally.

 

MR: These influences vary with time, and they change through the different parts of my career. For instance, when I was younger, during my teenage years I started by being attracted to Werner Herzog and his films—The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser was an inspiration for me. Later on, filmmakers such as Ken Loach, Michael Haneke, and Ruben Östlund, the Swedish filmmaker who made The Square, a favorite, became important to me. But I have to say that these constantly change; cinema for me is a learning experience—so I can refer more to films than to filmmakers. There are some filmmakers where I like some of their films better than others. This is as far as the international films go. With respect to the filmmakers within Iran, I think the question is quite different because it’s not just cinema we’re talking about in an authoritarian system but the methods of filmmaking. For instance, Abbas Kiarostami was someone who had a huge influence on my generation but it was almost a form of finding our identity that gave us the attraction to Kiarostami. With respect to artistic forms I can refer to Kamran Shirdel and his film The Night it Rained (1967), which I believe has had a lot of influence on my filmmaking. There are many other filmmakers whose work has been inspiring to me in Iranian cinema.

 

JK: One last question. I found myself surprised to be as moved as I was by the very final image of the film. My question then follows, and I mean this very sincerely: Can movies change the world?

 

MR: I don’t look at art or cinema as a tool to bring change. I try to tell stories with which I am personally connected. They might not be my highest interest, but they are my biggest priority. I don’t make films with the idea of changing the world, but I make them with the idea of putting every effort into doing what I like to do—what I like to do, and what I believe in doing.

At the same time, I don’t think that you can undermine the power of what films do. I may not intend to make changes or do certain things with my films, but they, on their own, might change the way the viewer thinks about things, the same way that I myself can watch a film and start thinking about certain topics differently.

My films have their own life, and they could make certain changes in people, even if I didn’t intend to do that.

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