Mohammad Rasoulof on German Oscar Entry ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’

Dissident Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has addressed the circumstances that led to his film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” being selected as Germany’s entry to the Oscars, rather than that of his native Iran.

Rasoulof was speaking at the Busan International Film Festival where he is serving as the president of the New Currents competition jury. In May, the filmmaker escaped to Europe after receiving sentence of jail and flogging from the Iranian authorities. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” – about an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court in Tehran who grapples with mistrust and paranoia as anti-government protests intensify and his family life is devastated – won a prize at Cannes.

“It is a complicated situation. My film was withdrawn by the Iranian government and I was sentenced to eight years [in prison],” Rasoulof said at the New Currents jury press conference in Busan on Friday. The filmmaker proceeded to Germany, where several of the producers of “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” are from. He expressed his gratitude to Germany for accepting the film and understanding its vision. “For me, this had a very great meaning, because they are opening their arms and understanding other cultures and the human meaning that has come from those cultures,” Rasoulof.

Looking to the future, Rasoulof said that he would make films “in any circumstances and anywhere in the world.” He added that his new films would be about “my culture and European culture [..] I have some new stories, and I’m always thinking about new projects.”

Iran chose family drama “In the Arms of the Tree” as its Oscar submission.

Rasoulof’s fellow jurors in Busan are Korean filmmaker Lee Myung-se (“M”), Chinese actor Zhou Dongyu (“Strangers When We Meet”), Indian actor Kani Kusruti (“All We Imagine as Light”) and Vanja Kaludjercic, director of International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Addressing the renaissance in contemporary Indian independent cinema, Kusruti, who starred in 2024 films Sundance-winning “Girls Will be Girls” and Cannes Grand Prix winner “All We Imagine as Light,” said, “They are fine tuning their craft in acting and in dialogue writing and in cinematography and keeping the diversity at the same time.”

Kaludjercic added, “From every region [of India] we find different, not only languages and cultures, but also very different approaches to cinema and cinematic language, and so much so that it’s almost when today we look at 1,000s of films for our own selections in Rotterdam and the language of cinema that surprises us most nowadays comes from India.”