The career of director Mohammad Rasoulof has been interrupted by jail sentences for his filmmaking, deemed “propaganda against the system” by the Iranian theocracy. His latest gripping drama takes its title from a type of plant that flourishes by strangling a host tree – an unambiguous metaphor for the public protests against the Islamic State in Iran.
Rasoulof’s new film is, like many of his previous projects, a complex thriller and piece of docu-fiction. It was filmed in secrecy earlier this year in and around Tehran. Under threat of another prison term, Rasoulof fled in exile to Germany, where post-production was completed. And now the film is Germany’s submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar.
Winner of a special prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, “Sacred Fig” concerns a judge (Missagh Zareh) on the secretive revolutionary court, whose occupation puts him at odds with his daughters (Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki), supporters of the Women, Life, Freedom movement. His wife (actress/activist Soheila Golestani) is divided in her loyalty, especially after the husband’s handgun, kept in a dresser drawer for protection, mysteriously disappears.
The movie, distributed by Neon, is playing in select theaters now. The conversation with Rasoulof (below) was interpreted by Dr. Sheida Dayani.
Your film comments on many big issues, but you’ve chosen the thriller/mystery genre to tell the story. How did you decide on that?
My ideas started with the family – with the husband, the wife, their two daughters. Usually, I start with the ideas and then lock in the characters, but here, I did the opposite. I locked in the characters of the family first. And I thought a lot about the mood of the characters and what each of them reveals to the audience. And that dictated the genre of the film.
There’s enormous tension in the film. There’s even a car chase on the highway. And so much of the plot revolves around a gun that has gone missing from the family’s apartment.
Yeah, I got a bit of action and thriller aspects in there. My instincts for experimenting told me to do it.
We see social-media footage of protests and brutality in the streets of Tehran during the Women, Life, Freedom movement in 2022, which happens as your story unfolds. How important was the inclusion of these videos?
This is a complex issue because I was telling the story of a family that’s transforming based on the events that were happening outside, but I was making a clandestine film and I couldn’t shoot outdoors, so I needed the real-life footage.
I also wanted to express how social media is so significant for the new generation to stay in touch with each other — and as a way to survive and breathe. At the same time, I was showing the difference between what social media captures and what the state TV shows people, which are total distortions of reality.
Actress Soheila Golestani, who plays the wife and mother, is also an activist. She still lives in Iran, is that right?
Yes, she does. She’s a very strong woman. She has been to prison before and she deliberately wants to stay in Iran to continue doing what she has been doing during the Women, Life, Freedom movement. I completely understand her because I also tried to stay in Iran. It took me seven years to make this decision to get out. It was as if I was reaching a cliff’s edge.
What does the International Feature Oscar selection mean to you?
The meaning of this choice is that we can see human stories beyond language and nationality. The entire post-production happened in Germany. I don’t have any Iranian ID cards; it’s been years since they took them away from me. But Germany gave me identification papers.
And if you had stayed in Iran, the film would never have been chosen.
Of course not. I had never in my life thought about the Oscars because my entire career in cinema was in opposition to the Iranian government. And it’s the government that chooses what films go to the Oscars. They would never choose a film of mine or a film of (fellow detained director) Jafar Panahi. He could have received an Oscar for his film “Offside” in 2006, but they deprived him of that. And hopefully, independent filmmakers like us can have similar experiences in the future.
And there is one part of this that is kind of funny, actually. After Germany picked the film as the Oscar selection, I believe the Iranian government stepped back a little. Because they realized that the more pressure they put on the film, the more it helps the film to go forward. That is the message this choice sends.
A version of this story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/ International issue of TheWrap awards magazine.
Read more from the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue here.
