Exiled Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof recounts the harrowing experience making ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’

“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” “is really a gripping thriller,” says The Times’ Mark Olsen. “It’s about a family in Tehran where the father, a wife and their two daughters ... It becomes somewhat of an allegory for living under this sort of repressive, patriarchal regime there in Iran. But in so many ways, it’s Mohammad Rasoulof’s own story that is what is so compelling here. He was in prison in Iran, was freed, was making this movie when he found out he was going to be getting a new prison sentence and so he finished shooting the movie and then fled on foot to Germany, where he now lives in exile, was able to finish the film, took it to the Cannes Film Festival. It is just an astonishing story and he wears it so lightly. And there’s something just so inspiring to be with him and to talk to him and to hear him tell not just his own experiences, but also what filmmaking means to him and what keeps him doing this.”