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Rasoulof was in the French Riviera town for the premiere of his
new drama "The Seed of the Sacred Fig", almost two weeks after
announcing he had fled Iran and entered into exile in the wake
of his sentencing to eight years in jail and flogging.
After he learned that he had a week left before his sentence
would be implemented, things moved quickly, he said, especially
as authorities had caught wind of the existence of his new film.
"I had to say to myself, well, do I want to be in prison, or
should I leave Iran, geographic Iran, and join the cultural Iran
that exists beyond its borders?" recalled the director.
"It took me two hours to take the decision. I walked around, I
paced around my house. I said goodbye to my plants that I love,
and I have many, many plants in my house," he added.
Then, Rasoulof left all his belongings and walked out of the
house. "It's not an easy decision to take. It still isn't easy
even to talk about it today with you," he told journalists.
Iran's culture minister Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili told state media
this month that Rasoulof's film had been made illegally and
there would be a crackdown on movies without permits.
"The Seed of the Sacred Fig" is about a court official who grows
increasingly controlling of his family during the 2022 protests
over the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman arrested by the
morality police for allegedly flouting dress codes.
The film drew the longest standing ovation at the festival after
its premiere on Friday night and was well received by critics
who called it "mesmerizingly gripping" and "shattering".
The director, who has been arrested and detained several times
for charges ranging from filming without a permit to "collusion
against national security", said that the idea for the film came
from years of confrontation with secret services.
"All these characters were inspired by real people, all the
scenes come from real situations," he said, adding that
experience has also made him adept at avoiding secret services.
"Our life is fairly similar to that of gangsters, except we are
gangsters of the cinema," he joked at the news conference.
(Reporting by Miranda Murray; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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