LOCARNO 2024 Piazza Grande
Mohammad Rasoulof • Director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig

by Teresa Vena, Cineuropa
August 15, 2024

“My collaborators are the victims of a slow form of torture”

The Iranian director fills us in on the background to his Cannes-awarded film as well as on the current political situation in Iran.

I think that the presidential elections for the new government are a weapon that the regime is deploying in order to give people an immediate sense of freedom, which allows the regime to rebuild itself. It's a way to keep the fight at bay. I don't think there can be any real changes at the moment...

The regime is a minefield – it has created so many problems of its own making. All it wants at the moment is to clean up all the problems, all the mines, around it.


Mohammad Rasoulof • Director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig
(© Marco Abram/Locarno Film Festival/Ti-Press)

After its premiere at Cannes, where it won the Special Jury Award, Mohammad Rasoulof's new film The Seed of the Sacred Fig was shown at this year's Locarno Film Festival, on the Piazza Grande. We met up with the filmmaker and asked him about the background to his film as well as about the current political situation in Iran.

Cineuropa: You use original footage of the 2022-2023 revolts in the film. Can you tell us more about this decision?
Mohammad Rasoulof: I was in prison when the revolt kicked off. This is why I couldn't take part or see what was going on. As soon as I came out, I started to watch all those videos with great curiosity. They were so interesting for me because, firstly, it was a time when every individual turned into a journalist and started filming. They showed such enormous courage to film what was going on in the streets, since that could have had dire consequences. At the same time, they also revealed the enormous changes brought about by social media in society, and particularly the relationship of the new generation with social media and society at large. I started thinking about the technicalities of recreating these scenes myself. Even if I’d had the capability to do so, if it had been imaginable to even have the filming permits to do so, how would it ever have been possible to recreate the power, the raw truth, the strength, the believability of those videos? It clearly wasn't.

The first thing that might come to mind was that I chose to show the less well-known videos. But I actually didn't want to do that. I thought it was more correct, and it would work better, to choose the well-known videos, which people have already seen. That way, they would recognise the emotion of watching them for the first time.

Could you share any information about your stretch in prison?
I was arrested in about mid-July 2022. I was interrogated continuously for several weeks, and then sent to prison. There, I met Jafar Panahi, and that’s how I learned that he was in prison. We were kept together in jail for about seven months. I came out in early 2023. I was kept in prison because of previous sentences that I had not served yet. The current sentence I have, which is of eight years in prison, was because of my last film, There Is No Evil. But I had also been sanctioned for A Man of Integrity. The reason why Panahi and I came out of prison is because with the revolts, there were so many arrests, and there was not enough space. Technically, we should have stayed in prison for much longer.

For The Seed of the Sacred Fig, you chose to name the collaborators and actors involved in the making of the film. What is happening to them because of their participation?
They are in Iran under enormous pressure. They are banned from leaving the country, their passports have been confiscated, and they are banned from working. It's a form of systematic torture the regime employs to control the artists and to make sure they cannot go on with their daily lives. They are victims of a slow form of torture.

What is your take on the situation in Iran at the moment?
I think that the presidential elections for the new government are a weapon that the regime is deploying in order to give people an immediate sense of freedom, which allows the regime to rebuild itself. It's a way to keep the fight at bay. I don't think there can be any real changes at the moment. Still, there is a great sense of underlying dissatisfaction and anger with the regime. We can see it in the huge rate of non-participation in the elections. Over 60% of the population boycotted the elections, but that doesn't mean that only 60% is against the Republic. Many who went out to vote went in the hope of being able to change something.

The regime is a minefield – it has created so many problems of its own making. All it wants at the moment is to clean up all the problems, all the mines, around it. But a regime that is unpopular among its population cannot really continue. This is why I think that the revolt has not died down yet. When the revolts first took off, no one thought it would be such a long movement.

What have the reactions of your colleagues been like?
As an Iranian filmmaker, I was completely amazed, in a good way, by the reactions of the Iranian filmmaking community towards the revolt. Before, it was very difficult to see even the tiniest reaction on their part towards the different social events. Because of the will of the people, they were somewhat forced, but they also wanted to clarify their positions and stances vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic.