‘The Seed Of The Sacred Fig’s Mohammad Rasoulof On Brush With Iranian Hardline Regime: “We’re Gangsters Of Cinema” – Cannes

deadline.com:

“If we had to deal with cocaine, it would have been easier,” joked The Seed of the Sacred Fig filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof this AM at a Cannes presser about his entanglement with totalitarian Iranian authorities over his cinema which prompted the filmmaker to flee his homeland from imprisonment. “We’re gangsters of cinema,” Rasoulof further quipped in talking about how he’s a renegade with his art in the face of what he called a dictatorship in Iran. “My heart is with the actors and the members of the team who can’t be with us, I think about them all the time,” said Rasoulof at the top of the conference. “I hope that the restrictions they’re encountering will be lifted.” “The regime tries to appear as a supreme power.

What are they really afraid of? Why are they so afraid of the stories in our films?” asked the director. “They’re afraid of arthouse films, they’re prepared to prevent the filming of such kinds of films.” “Don’t be impressed by all this propaganda,” said Rasoulof in his advice to the younger generation of filmmakers in Iran, “Don’t be impressed by intimidation.” The filmmaker’s latest follows Iman, an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, who grapples with mistrust and paranoia as nationwide political protests intensify and his gun mysteriously disappears.

Suspecting the involvement of his wife Najmeh and his daughters Rezvan and Sana, he imposes drastic measures at home, causing tensions to rise.

Step by step, social norms and the rules of family life are being suspended. On the pic’s allegory, Rasoulof said today that he wanted to focus on “the individuals who enable this system to survive.