Mohammad Rasoulof is amazed he’s even in the Oscar race.
The Iranian regime banned Rasoulof from making movies back in 2017. Each of his films since — including The Seed of the Sacred Fig, one of the favorites for this year’s Academy Award in the best international feature category — has been made in secret, without official approval from Tehran, and with cast and crew under the threat of imprisonment or worse if they get caught. Rasoulof, facing an eight-year prison sentence for opposing the government, fled the country early last year in order to finish the film.
By Academy rules, the best international feature contenders are submitted by their countries of origin. Banned or dissident movies never make the cut. For the 97th Oscars, Tehran picked Babak Lotfi Khajepasha’s family drama In the Arms of the Tree as its official candidate (it didn’t make the shortlist).
But because The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a German co-production, and because Rasoulof now has official refugee status in the country (he lives in Berlin), the film qualified as a German entry. It was picked by Germany’s Oscar committee to represent the country at the 2025 awards.
“It’s amazing that Germany did this,” says Rasoulof, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the European Film Awards in December. “I was extremely happy, of course, but this also gave me a new understanding of what cinema can be, of how universal it can be, of how films, in a way, can belong to everyone.”
On a practical level, the more attention The Seed of the Sacred Fig gets, the safer Rasoulof and his crew — Soheila Golestani and Setareh Maleki, the actresses who play sisters in the film have also fled the country and now live in Berlin — will be from Iranian government reprisals.
“The bigger the film becomes, the more successful it becomes, the more it will protect me and the cast and crew, both inside and outside Iran,” says Rasoulof. “An even more important impact, I think, is that [the Oscar campaign] can shine a light and give hope to all filmmakers working under repressive circumstances around the globe. What really excites me about all this is the idea that the young generation in Iran can now feel even more empowered to break free of all the restrictions imposed upon it by the government.”
For the first time in a long, long while, Rasoulof can imagine a future where his primary concern will be making movies.
“It’s really a sort of dream come true,” he says. “I’ve always been grappling on the one hand with cinema, and on the other hand with censorship, artistic freedom and artistic expression. Because of my circumstances, I’ve always had to focus on the latter. Now I’m finally in circumstances where I can imagine I may be able to give myself entirely to cinema.”
