Exiled Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof pointed to Jafar Panahi’s latest prison sentence as proof that Iranian cinema remains under repression, speaking at a Tokyo International Film Festival press conference for the Kurosawa Akira Award.
Rasoulof and Japanese director O Mipo are this year’s recipients.
“Of course, Iranian cinema continues to face repression, and my friends and colleagues remain under enormous pressure,” Rasoulof said in Persian. “Just a few days ago, another sentence was handed down against Jafar Panahi, who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year: five more years in prison and the confiscation of his property.”
He said many Iranian filmmakers were determined to take on those in power by telling their stories directly instead of using metaphor to evade repression.
Rasoulof made the same shift himself after 2010, when he was arrested while making a film and sentenced to five years. Alone in a cell, he asked himself why anyone should go to prison for making a film. He began to see his reliance on allegory, a technique classical Persian poets used to shield themselves, as a form of self-protection.
“I thought I was using metaphor to run away from the regime, but I thought I wouldn’t do it anymore. I don’t need to run away anymore, so then I decided to tell things directly,” Rasoulof said.
The selection committee was chaired by Yamada Yoji and also included director Lee Sang-il, cinematographer Ashizawa Akiko and festival programming director Ichiyama Shozo. The committee cited Rasoulof’s films about state repression of human rights. It singled out “There Is No Evil” and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” for treating even the enforcers of oppression as ordinary citizens, and it also recognized his refusal to stop working despite pressure.
Rasoulof grew up watching “Red Beard” on Iranian state television, more than 10 times by his own count. The Kurosawa film closest to him now, though, is “Dersu Uzala.”
“Whenever I feel hopeless, or whenever I feel depressed, even now, I see ‘Dersu Uzala’ so that I can go back to my own life and I can find some hope,” he said.
The committee praised O for looking at people on society’s margins without passing moral judgment, starting with her 2006 debut “The Sakai’s Happiness.” It highlighted her unforced direction of children in “Being Good,” “Living in Two Worlds” and “How Dare You?”
O had her first son in 2015 and expected to return to work quickly. She found that she could not make films and raise a child at the same time, and after her second son was born in 2020 she assumed her career was over. That changed when she watched the 2023 Japan Academy Film Prize ceremony on television. Accepting the best actress award, Ando Sakura said plainly that filmmaking and child-rearing could not be done together.
“I was struck by thunder when I heard that, and at the same time I was relieved,” O said.
The remark convinced her she could pick up her career again, and she went on to make her first feature in nine years. O said she wants the industry to let crews put their own lives first, whether that means children, caring for sick relatives or anything else. When she joined the business 28 or 29 years ago, she said, senior crew members warned her she would not be at her parents’ deathbeds.
For “How Dare You?” O held weekend workshops with large groups of children instead of formal auditions. She cast mostly first-time actors over trained child performers. Viewers often ask whether she shot with a hidden camera or worked without a script. She said the reverse is true: the film had a full screenplay, written with Takada Ryo, and went through extensive rehearsals before shooting. The children’s own phrasing reshaped the dialogue along the way.
O first saw a Kurosawa film, “Rashomon,” as a film student. She later trained under the late Obayashi Nobuhiko, whose making-of documentary on “Dreams” runs longer than the film itself. She said she shares Kurosawa’s conviction that cinema has the beauty and power to bring peace to the world.
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