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Exiled Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof pointed to Jafar Panahi’s recent imprisonment as proof that Iranian cinema is under repression, speaking at the Tokyo International Film Festival press conference for Kurosawa’s Akira award.
Rasuloff and Japanese director Oh Mipo are this year’s recipients.
“Of course, Iranian cinema continues to face repression and my friends and colleagues remain under enormous pressure,” Rasulof said in Farsi. “Just a few days ago, Jafar Panahi, who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year, was given another sentence: another five years in prison and the confiscation of his property.
He said many Iranian filmmakers were determined to fight those in power by telling their stories directly, instead of using metaphor to evade repression.
Rasuloff made the same shift himself after 2010, when he was arrested while filming the movie and sentenced to 5 years. Alone in his cell, he asked himself why anyone would go to prison to make a film. He began by basing it on allegory, a technique used by classical Persian poets to defend themselves as a form of self-defense.
“I thought I was using a metaphor to escape from the regime, but I thought I wouldn’t do it anymore. I don’t need to escape anymore, so I decided to say it directly,” Rasuloff said.
The selection committee was chaired by Yamada Yoji and also included director Lee Sang-il, cinematographer Akiko Ashizawa, and festival programming director Ichiyama Shozo. The committee cited Rasuloff’s films about state repression of human rights. He singled out “There is no evil” and “Sacred fig seed” to treat even the perpetrators of oppression as ordinary citizens, and also to acknowledge his refusal to stop working under pressure.
Rasoulof grew up watching “Red Beard” on Iranian state television, more than 10 times by his own count. However, Kurosawa’s closest film to him now is Dersu Uzala.
“When I feel hopeless, or when I feel depressed, even now I see ‘Dersu Uzala’ to help me get back to my life and find hope,” she said.
The committee praised Oh for looking at people on the fringes of society without moral judgment, starting with his 2006 debut, Sakai’s Happiness. This underscored his compulsive direction with children in Be Good, Living in Two Worlds and How Dare You?
O gave birth to her first son in 2015 and is expected to return to work soon. She found she couldn’t make movies and raise her son at the same time, and after her second son was born in 2020, she thought her career was over. That changed when he watched the 2023 Japan Academy Awards ceremony on television. While accepting the award for best actress, Ando Sakura made it clear that making a movie and raising a child cannot go together.
“When I heard that, I was shocked and calmed down at the same time,” said O.
The note convinced him that he could resume his career, and he went on to make his first film nine years later. Oh said he wants the industry to allow crews to put their own lives first, whether it’s caring for children, sick relatives or anything else. When he joined the business 28 or 29 years ago, he said, senior members of the crew warned him not to be at his parents’ deathbed.
“How dare you?” O held weekend workshops with large groups of children instead of formal auditions. He mostly chose first-time actors over trained children. Viewers often ask if he was filming with a hidden camera or without a script. According to him, the opposite is true: the film had a complete script written with Takada Ryo and went through extensive rehearsals before shooting. Children’s words changed the dialogue on the way.
Oh first saw Kurosawa’s film Rashomon as a film student. He later studied under the late Obayashi Nobuhiko, whose documentary on “Dreams” is longer than the film itself. He said he shares Kurosawa’s belief that cinema has the beauty and power to bring peace to the world.
