Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Mohammad Rasoulof had crossed the Iranian border on foot into exile before the Tehran authorities got wind of his covertly shot new film The Seed of the Sacred Fig.In this domestic conspiracy thriller, which was nominated for an Oscar last week, a newly appointed judge rubber-stamps state executions in response to the 2022 protests sparked by the fatal beating of 22-year-old student Mahsa Amini by morality police. (The authorities claimed she died of a heart attack while in custody.) The judge\u2019s suspicions about his own daughters\u2019 activities provokes him to employ oppressive interrogation tactics in the family home. Meanwhile, Rasoulof weaves in phone-shot footage of the protests and police brutality posted online.Even before this latest act of resistance, the Cannes-prizewinning Iranian director was facing eight years in jail and a flogging for criticising previous government violence and for the content of films such as\u00a0Manuscripts Don\u2019t Burn\u00a0(2013) and A Man of Integrity\u00a0(2017). He had already served seven months in jail from 2022 to 2023 and been under a travel ban since 2017\u00a0after being accused of \u201cspreading propaganda against the Islamic government\u201d in his work and \u201cendangering national security\u201d.His new film\u2019s explicit critique of the regime feels like a decisive break with Iran, as if the young protesters\u2019 boundless courage has further emboldened an already outspoken filmmaker. \u201cThe new generation does make me more courageous,\u201d he tells me from Germany, where he is now based. \u201cBut the main aim was to keep working. I left Iran because I had to make this very cut-and-dried choice of going to prison for at least eight years, or to use these years I have left to live to make more films.\u201dRasoulof joins a growing wave of fine Iranian filmmakers inspired to defy state censorship only to be forced into exile or seclusion. Iran\u2019s cinema seems rejuvenated by their honesty, even as its leading lights are punished. The psychological price of leaving was dramatised by Jafar Panahi in No Bears (2022), shot illicitly while the director was under a travel and filmmaking ban. Playing a version of himself remotely monitoring a shoot in Turkey from Iran, Panahi at one point finds himself standing on the border and flinches back to home turf as if burnt.Even last year\u2019s gentle art-house hit My Favourite Cake drew the ire of authorities. The portrayal of an alcohol-drinking, dancing, privately hijab-free septuagenarian heroine doomed its co-directors (and spouses) Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha to a filmmaking and travel ban. \u201cFor the first time since the [1979] revolution we wanted to make a real version of life in Iran,\u201d Moghaddam tells me from Tehran. \u201cPeople have parties and drink alcohol at home, but outside we have to be the person [the authorities] want. This contrast is making us all crazy, because we can\u2019t be ourselves. This is why we decided not to lie in this film, and to cross those red lines. These last three years [since Amini\u2019s killing] have changed a lot here.\u201d Remaining in Iran, even in internal exile, is therefore essential to them both. \u201cThe young generation has started a movement, and it\u2019s our duty to be part of it.\u201d The system is not monolithic, and is sometimes contradictory . . . At times it lets people let a bit of steam off to preserve itself in the longer run\u2019For the moment, this condemns them to dreaming of films they can\u2019t make. \u201cEvery day and every moment,\u201d Sanaeeha sighs. \u201cFor our next scripts, we\u2019re now doing the mises en sc\u00e8ne, and thinking about the set decoration, the clothes and everything.\u201dThe Islamic Republic\u2019s most successful directors, Asghar Farhadi and the late Abbas Kiarostami, have made cinema inside its red lines. The two-time Oscar-winning Farhadi focuses on novelistic studies weighing characters in a moral balance beyond politics, though he has angrily rejected accusations of a complicitous easy ride. \u201cArt is such a wide world and we all have very different approaches,\u201d Rasoulof says, diplomatically. \u201cWe also have very different relationships with power. But I don\u2019t think there are any guidelines about how to make good art inside a regime.\u201dOthers opting to remain within the system work under a sword of Damocles. Saeed Roustaee\u2019s pummelling, pungent police thriller Law of Tehran (2019), a domestic smash-hit, ends in a bleak, state-conducted mass hanging. The social critique of his follow-up Leila\u2019s Brothers (2022) resulted in a prison sentence, but he is now working again. \u201cIt shows that the system is not monolithic, and sometimes contradictory and inefficient,\u201d Rasoulof says. \u201cAt times it lets people let a bit of steam off to preserve itself in the longer run.\u201dThe public and private double-life explored in My Favourite Cake is central to Farahnaz Sharifi\u2019s documentary My Stolen Planet. It combines Sharifi\u2019s footage of hijab-free home dancing with painstakingly assembled archive footage of 1970s home movies of Iranian girls in western casual wear. History unfolds as Sharifi and her female documentarist friends film protests, and a passing goon suddenly smashes a camera. \u201cThere has always been an unofficial flow in Iranian cinema of especially women documentary filmmakers,\u201d Sharifi tells me. \u201cRecording images of private lives is an unofficial history for future generations.\u201d Sharifi was in Germany when her home was raided and her precious archive destroyed, confirming for her the \u201cnightmare\u201d of exile.\u00a0In her film she is nostalgic for a pre-revolutionary Iran that she has seen only in scratched home movies. A season this month at London\u2019s Barbican, Masterpieces of the Iranian New Wave, shows the country\u2019s rich cinema culture under the Shah. Ebrahim Golestan\u2019s Brick and Mirror (1964) includes a long night-time scene in which a young woman and man eventually make love in his flat with a sense of precious private freedom still recognisable in the Iran of today. Mohammad Reza Aslani\u2019s Chess of the Wind (1976) follows a decadent family in decline while living in a mansion oppressively submerged in sea green shadow like an abandoned ocean liner, foreshadowing the Shah\u2019s fall.Most of the season\u2019s films have been banned in Iran since 1979. What happened next may give pause to today\u2019s exiles, says season curator Ehsan Khoshbakht. \u201cThe generation mostly moved abroad, and most of them never managed to work again,\u201d he explains. \u201cThose who did, lived extremely hard lives and could only make very small films.\u201d Khoshbakht is a London-based exile himself, whose documentaries include Celluloid Underground (2023), in which he scours Tehran for banned pre-revolutionary reels. \u201cI don\u2019t see myself as an exiled filmmaker,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause I could only have made those films with this distance from Iran. The question of what you feel is urgent to film changes when you are inside or outside. The fact that there are so many Iranian filmmakers in exile is very sad, because you know about those who\u2019ve been successful. I know God knows how many who are struggling.\u201dRasoulof doesn\u2019t fear exile diminishing Iranian cinema now. \u201cWith the internet, even from outside Iran you have access to Iran, and for all these filmmakers working inside and outside, I see a luminous future. Once I\u2019ve done the films I need to make [in Europe], I\u2019m absolutely certain that I shall return,\u201d he concludes. \u201cIf it means I go to prison, I will accept it. I\u2019ve paid those consequences before.\u201d\u2018The Seed of the Sacred Fig\u2019 is in UK cinemas from February 7. \u2018My Favourite Cake\u2019 is on Curzon Home Cinema. \u2018My Stolen Planet\u2019 is showing at Bertha DocHouse, London. \u2018Masterpieces of the Iranian New Wave\u2019 is at the Barbican, London, February 4-25, barbican.org.ukFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Mohammad Rasoulof had crossed the Iranian border on foot into exile before the Tehran authorities got wind of his covertly shot new film The Seed of the Sacred Fig.In this domestic conspiracy thriller, which was nominated for an Oscar last week, a newly appointed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":187684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-187683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187685,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187683\/revisions\/187685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}