{"id":684500,"date":"2025-08-11T19:30:27","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T16:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/mohammad-rasoulof-is-considering-a-return-to-iran-and-has-three-film-scripts-ready\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T19:30:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T16:30:27","slug":"mohammad-rasoulof-is-considering-a-return-to-iran-and-has-three-film-scripts-ready","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/mohammad-rasoulof-is-considering-a-return-to-iran-and-has-three-film-scripts-ready\/","title":{"rendered":"Mohammad Rasoulof Is Considering a Return to Iran and Has Three Film Scripts Ready"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tIranian dissident filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof\u00a0(There Is No Evil<\/em>, The Seed of the Sacred Fig<\/em>) had to\u00a0flee his home country\u00a0to evade an\u00a0eight-year prison sentence\u00a0last year. But in an interview with THR<\/em>, the auteur shared that he is considering a return.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOver the 15 months I have been spending out of Iran in exile, as I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve followed, so many bizarre events have taken place in Iran and at such an unparalleled speed that my main question right now is not which script<\/a> should I start shooting, but what should I do?\u201d Rasoulof shared in a conversation during the 78th edition\u00a0of the\u00a0Locarno Film Festival via a translator. \u201cShould I stay here [in Europe], or should I go back to Iran?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe City of Locarno on Monday bestowed a new award on Rasoulof, the inaugural Locarno Citt\u00e0 della Pace Award, or \u201cLocarno City of Peace Award.\u201d Created in collaboration between the city and the film festival, it is designed to honor a commitment to peace, diplomacy and dialogue.<\/p>\n

\n\tDoes Rasoulof not fear prison or other punishment if he goes back to Iran? \u201cI do have such fears. It\u2019s only natural as a human being,\u201d he told THR<\/em>. \u201cBut what really concerns me at the moment, more than just being confronted by my own fears, is how I can stand up to this regime. What is the best way? Is the best way to return to Iran despite all the risks it might entail, or is it better to stay here and work on a new film?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe does have three scripts, written by him, ready if the opportunity to make a new movie presents itself. \u201cOne, I actually wrote in 2012, and I\u2019ve had a producer attached who is waiting for me to get started,\u201d Rasoulof shared. \u201cAnother one, I wrote around 2022, 2023, that period where I was living in my country and in and out of prison, and I couldn\u2019t do very much really, so I wrote a script. And the last one is a story that really moves me and that I\u2019ve just been working on more recently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked about the themes he is exploring in these film scripts, Rasoulof said: \u201cThey relate to the work I\u2019ve done before. They are connected, but I try never to repeat myself and keep innovating. In these three scripts, the main locations are in Europe and in the United States, but they all have very much to do with Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis film Sacred Fig<\/em>, won a\u00a0special jury award\u00a0at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and was in the running for the\u00a0best international feature Oscar, submitted by his new home, Germany.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring his time in Berlin, he also premiered his play Destination: Origin<\/em>, which brought him back to stage work after about 30 years. Featuring the actresses from Sacred Fig<\/em>, Niousha Akhshi, Mahsa Rostami, and Setareh Maleki, who also had to leave Iran for Germany, it deals with the challenges of migration and opening up to a new culture, while trying to retain your own culture.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt debuted a couple of months ago in Berlin, went very well, and is still touring,\u201d Rasoulof told THR<\/em>. \u201cIt was a very good experience, because it related closely to the actresses\u2019 experience of immigration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLocarno Film Festival artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro on Monday lauded the Iranian filmmaker for his work \u201cthat can be understood as a hymn to human dignity,\u201d adding: \u201cAnd only out of complete respect for human dignity can a renewed spirit of peace arise.\u201d The jury said the inaugural peace award was going to \u201ca remarkable creator of poetic and political cinema, whose work powerfully and profoundly explores themes of freedom, individual responsibility, and human dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRasoulof is one of several big-name Iranian film creatives attending Locarno78. Iran-born actress\u00a0Golshifteh Farahani\u00a0received the Excellence Award Davide Campari on the picturesque lakeside town\u2019s Piazza Grande square on the fest\u2019s opening night. She got the honor from Zar Amir, who stars in the opening film\u00a0In the Land of Arto<\/em>\u00a0from director\u00a0Tamara\u00a0Stepanyan. Also, dissident director Jafar Panahi is presenting his Cannes Palme d\u2019Or winner\u00a0It Was Just an Accident<\/em> at the fest.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf Amir and Farahani are still in town, Rasoulof said he\u2019d look forward to meeting up with them. With Panahi, he has already made plans for a get-together. \u201cJafar and I are not just colleagues. We have shared so many deeply bizarre experiences,\u201d the filmmaker told THR<\/em>. \u201cI am very curious to see him again after 15 months. I can\u2019t wait to reconnect, because we spent two periods in prison together in Iran. We basically lived together in one small cell, sitting together for over six months.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRasoulof hasn\u2019t seen It Was Just an Accident<\/em> yet but will do so in Locarno. \u201cI can\u2019t wait. We have arranged things so that I can watch it here on the big screen\u201d on the town\u2019s Piazza Grande.<\/p>\n

\n\tRasoulof ends the conversation with another thought: \u201cThis might feel a bit private, but what I would say is that I realize that the sense of belonging and being deeply rooted within one culture is so much more complex than what you\u2019ll ever be able to portray through cinema, through art. You might be able to tell a story to indicate some facets, but there will always be things that kind of drop from your hands. And so I realize that I\u2019m not free in the sense that freedom is something bigger than what we can do within a country with a group of people. At the same time, so much is happening in the world that as much as you try to be free and resist, the events around us are of such a scale that it\u2019s very difficult not to feel powerless.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iranian dissident filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof\u00a0(There Is No Evil, The Seed of the Sacred Fig) had to\u00a0flee his home country\u00a0to evade an\u00a0eight-year prison sentence\u00a0last year. But in an interview with THR, the auteur shared that he is considering a return. \u201cOver the 15 months I have been spending out of Iran in exile, as I\u2019m sure…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":684501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Mohammad-Rasoulof-Cosmopol-Film.jpg?w=632&h=355&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[124783,139288,157776,52716,139811],"class_list":["post-684500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-international","tag-jafar-panahi","tag-locarno","tag-locarno-film-festival","tag-mohammad-rasoulof"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}