Rasoulof’s prophecy, "Iran will sink into a grave of its own making"

After the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and having entered the short list for the best film in original language at the Oscars (advanced by Germany), it arrives in Italian cinemas on 20 February (with Lucky Red and BiM) the courageous film by Iranian dissident director Mohammad Rasoulof, ‘The seed of the sacred fig’. Having secretly fled to Europe from Iran, where he is under an eight-year sentence for “security attacks”, the director sets his latest work in Tehran in 2022, in the first days of the unprecedented protests of the “Woman, life, freedom”, recounting the daily melee between society and theocratic regime in the Islamic Republic, through the struggle between modernity and tradition within a middle class family.

The film alternates footage, all shot secretly and mostly inside a small apartment, with the images circulated on social media of the ferocious repression of peaceful protestswhich broke out in September 2022 after the death of the young Mahsa Amini in custody of the morality police for alleged violation of the veil obligation. A gun missing from the house is the narrative device that explodes the tensions between two young students Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki) and the very religious and conservative father (Missagh Zareh), recently promoted to the investigating judge. The mother (Soheila Golestani) tries to play the role of mediator between these two worlds that are unable to communicate, but she too will end up running away from the lies she has told herself in order to live in peace.

“The gun – explains Rasoulof in the press conference – is not an incitement to armed revolt, but becomes the new generations’ last attempt at self-defence, to disarm the oppressor after all the violence experienced”. Rasoulof is convinced that “it will not be violence” that will bring down the Islamic Republic. “The most important characteristic of the struggle of women and many men in Iran is that it rejects any form of violence”, the director is keen to explain. All the oppression and repression carried out against Iranian society in 46 years are destined to backfire against the Islamic Republic itself.

The daily news already talks about this, Rasoulof points out: “Two of the most infamous Iranian judges (Ali Razini and Mohammad Moqiseh) who signed collective death sentences, were killed by a person who took their bodyguards’ gun and he shot. Whoever sows the wind reaps the storm”. Even if he declares that he cannot make political predictions about his country, the Iranian director constructs the last scene, starring the most conservative character, as a prophecy: “The regime will sink into a tomb that is being created alone”.

Rasoulof on Cecilia Sala, “Evin much tougher for Europeans“

Due to the oppression and daily difficulties to which an Iranian living in the Islamic Republic is accustomed, even the infamous Evin prison may be more bearable than for a European. For this reason “I think it was very difficult for the journalist Cecilia Sala”, says the dissident director Mohammad Rasoulof, previously detained in the same prison where the Italian journalist, released last January 8, remained for 21 days. “I admire Cecilia Sala for going to Iran to talk about Iranian women, but I imagine that for her the experience of Evin prison was very difficult because as a European you are less prepared than us Iranians”, explained the director, in Italy to present his film ‘The seed of the fig tree sacro’ (in cinemas from 20 February, distributed by Lucky Red and BiM), already Special Jury Prize at the last Cannes Film Festival.

“I spent two periods of my life in that infamous prison”Rasoulof said at the press conference, “but I was born, raised and lived in Iran, I am prepared to fight with the difficulties we encounter every day and I believe that a European is much less prepared”. Rasoulof then invited us not to forget what the families of political prisoners experience in Iran, an aspect that the director also addressed in his latest film, nominated for an Oscar by Germany, the country where he took refuge after having secretly left Iran last year.