Mohammad Rasoulof
Mohammad RASOULOF (1973, Iran) is an independent filmmaker. He studied Sociology at Shiraz University and Film Editing at the Sooreh Higher Education Institute in Tehran. He made six short films in the period 1991–1999. His first feature, The Twilight, was released in 2002. On 20 December 2010, he was sentenced by the Iranian government to six years in prison on charges of “assembly, collusion, and propagandising against the regime”. This was later reduced to a conditional sentence of one year and a ban on making films. Since then, Rasoulof makes his film clandestinely, starting with Manuscripts Don’t Burn (2013). After winning the Un Certain Regard competition in Cannes with A Man of Integrity (2017), he was arrested again. His passport was confiscated, preventing him from travelling outside of Iran. Rasoulof was sentenced again in July 2019 by Iran’s special prosecutor’s office for offenses relating to media and culture to one year in prison and a two-year ban on practicing his profession. This meant he was unable to attend the Berlinale for the premiere of There Is No Evil (2020) or to accept the Golden Bear. Mohammad was forced to flee to a safe house in Germany after being sentenced again by the Islamic Republic to eight years in prison, following the selection of his film The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) in the main competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Filmography
Friday (1991, short), The Pin (1993, short), Seven Dreams (1994, short), Ten Seconds More (1995, short), The Glass House (1997, short), Evening Party (1999, short), Gagooman/The Twilight (2002), Jazireh ahani/Iron Island (2005), Baad-e-daboor/Head Wind (2008, doc), Keshtzar haye sepid/The White Meadows (2009), Bé omid é didar/Goodbye (2011), Dast-Neveshtehaa Nemisoosand/Manuscripts Don’t Burn (2013), Lerd/A Man of Integrity (2017), Sheytan vojud nadarad/There Is No Evil (2020), Jenayat-e amdi (2022, doc), The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)
More info: Wikipedia, Mohammad Rasoulof
Mohammad Rasoulof at IFFR
-
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Now-exiled Iranian writer-director Rasoulof interweaves political activism with family drama. Winner of Cannes Prix Spécial.
-
Manuscripts Don’t Burn
Two government officials are on a mission to arrest a rebellious writer in this furious indictment of corrupt and murderous acts, in the form of a
-
The White Meadows
Last December, Mohammad Rasoulof and his fellow filmmaker Jafar Panahi were sentenced by a Revolutionary Court to six years imprisonment. They were
-
Gesher
Film debut from the tradition of semi-documentary filmmaking in Iran, looking at three emigrant workers and their everyday hardship to earn money.
-
A Man of Integrity
A respectable family man, Reza, loses his money, his car and his source of income. What are you left with and what next? In his clandestinely shot
