The Seed of the Sacred Fig was (secretly) shot in Iran with Iranian actors and an Iranian director. But it’s Germany’s submission for Best International Film. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members An Oscars ad at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood with a portrait of Oscar host Conan O'Brien. Photo by Barbara Munker/picture alliance via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig' about?
The Oscars are this Sunday, and of all the films nominated, only one of them was filmed in secret. It's called The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
It's about an Iranian family at odds with each other over the country's repressive policies.
It was shot in Iran.
It's got Iranian actors. It's got an Iranian director. It's very much about Iran. But it's Germany's submission to the Oscars. The director of this movie, Mohammad Rasoulaf, is in exile, but we caught up with him in New York City to ask him what it's like to make a movie secretly and why Germany is repping this super Iranian movie. We're doing the Oscars. Today explains Stott.
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You are listening to Today Explained. I'm Mohamed Raslof. You can tell me Mohamed.
That's just about all the English we got out of the seat of the Sacred Figs director. The rest of our conversation was done through a translator who was with him in his New York City hotel. We started with the craziest thing about this movie, that it was shot in secret in Tehran.
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Chapter 2: Why was 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig' filmed in secret?
Well, of course, the power structure in Iran, the Islamic Republic, is a despotic and repressive regime. And it has... implemented widespread censorship on all parts of the society. It does not allow any voices that are critical of it to be heard. Voices like myself who make critical movies.
And so this is why the film had to be made in secret because we are trying to get our voices out and they're not allowing the voices to be heard.
When people in our audience hear that this movie was filmed in secret in Iran, they might imagine, oh, there were a lot of interior shots, you know, scenes set inside buildings, scenes set inside apartments, whatever it might be. That's how you film a movie secretly.
But I was surprised when watching it that there are indeed shots of, you know, this family that the movie is about eating dinner together. Outside of a restaurant, you know, there's shots of people driving around Tehran. How do you do that secretly? Obviously, you have cameras when you're filming outside.
Yes, of course, at first we had limited equipment and we had to be inside and have interior shots. But gradually we learned how to be seen and how to have... the exterior shots. It's like wearing clothes. You try to protect yourself that way. The underground cinema in Iran tries not to be seen and tries to have films that are not impacted in their quality by the fact that they are underground.
This movie, The Seat of the Sacred Fig, it follows a family being torn apart. A father who's part of the sort of establishment in Tehran and his supportive wife. And then their two daughters who are unhappy with the system and eager to join young women protesting in the streets. And it's very much set during the Masa Amini protests from a few years ago.
Why did you want to set a movie during those protests? And how did you come up with the idea for this family where all of the tensions we were seeing in the streets in Tehran were sort of manifested in this family unit?
As you said yourself, this is a story of a family who live together, whose members live together. but they think very differently from one another.
This could be a difference of generations.
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Chapter 3: How was 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig' directed remotely?
For my previous films and for what I had written on social media about social and political events.
And that's why you not only filmed this movie secretly, but you were also directing it remotely. You weren't allowed to make a movie in Iran, so you were never on the set of your own movie. How does that even work?
The most important complication was how I was going to direct from a distance. I was constantly watching a monitor when I was afar and the monitor was on set. And I also had two assistants who were present on set. One of them was my liaison with the actors, with the artistic team, and the other was my liaison with with the technical team and I was communicating through sound.
Everything that was happening I could hear and I could tell them what to do through sound. And technically it was a little difficult but we got used to it as we went on and in the end We ended up having a very good and close collaboration. And some of the scenes, actually, it worked better. But the other complication I had was how to keep my focus. I was under a lot of pressure.
I was really stressed out. And at any moment, anything could have happened. So we were always in a state of in-between hope and hopelessness.
And now you very well may win an Oscar for this film that you shot in secret remotely in Iran. But of course, the country that wins this Oscar, if it indeed wins, is Germany. Why is it Germany? Yes, of course.
Well, when I was in jail and I was released, My family was in Germany and I no longer could work in Iran. I no longer could make films. And I decided that I had to leave because otherwise I had to go to jail and play the role of the victim. And I did not want to be a victim of the censorship. So I decided to leave Iran through the mountains through a very, very difficult trip.
And after I got to a neighboring country, I contacted the German consulate and they knew that my family was in Germany. So they helped me travel to Germany. And in addition to that, my post-production all happened in Germany. The editing process and my actors, after they left Iran, they also went to Germany and they started living there. The budget of the film also partly came from Germany.
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Chapter 4: Why is Germany submitting an Iranian film for the Oscars?
But there is also more meaning to this for me. People who chose to nominate this film on behalf of Germany to the Oscars gave a very strong message to the other filmmakers outside. And that is that there is always going to be hope for filmmakers who are working under a lot of pressure.
And I also think that the film has a similar fate to my own fate, and that is because I'm an Iranian, I'm traveling with German documents, and so is the film. The film was made in Iran, but it is now traveling around with German identity and documents.
Mohamed, thank you so much for joining us. I'm not in the Academy, but I hope you win an Oscar on Sunday. Thank you. Thanks. Muhammad Rasul, if you can call him Muhammad, his translator was Shada Dayani. The movie's The Seed of the Sacred Fig, and it's nominated for an Oscar for Best International Film. But some say Best International Film is the messiest category at the Oscars.
We're going to find out why when we're back on Today Explained.
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Chapter 5: What makes the Best International Film category controversial?
Hey there, I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, the podcast about tech and media and the way they're colliding. And this week I'm talking about the state of the movies and the state of TV and how they all get melded together in the Oscars, a huge event that looks like it's going to get smaller every year.
Here to explain what happened this year and what's going to happen in the future is Matt Bellany, the veteran Hollywood journalist from Puck. Matt is smart, and he's going to make you feel smart for listening in. You can hear our chat on channels from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
And the Oscar goes to... Sean Ramos from Today Explained here with Nate Jones from Vulture, where earlier this month you published a piece titled, Is There Any Way to Fix Oscar's International Film Category? What's wrong with it, Nate?
So there are a couple things wrong with the international film category. So basically, how the international film category works is that the award does not go to a director, it does not go to a filmmaker, it goes to a country. And so the way it works is that every country in the world submits one film.
So dozens, sometimes hundreds of countries, they submit their films to the Oscars and you only get one. So if there's two great films from Switzerland, in one year? Doesn't matter. Only one. The second big issue is that the people deciding who submits these films to the Oscars are not Academy members. They are often artists, but often government ministers. from overseas governments.
And so one of the things you quite often see in the best international film race is that any film that is sort of remotely critical of certain governments from certain countries just have 0% chance of getting it. Unless, as we are seeing this year, they can kind of get rescued in a way by just sort of the lucky happenstance of being co-produced by a country that is not the film they are set in.
So that is what's happened with Seed of the Sacred Fig where, you know, they're quite lucky. I was talking to an Oscar strategist last week that they said, you know, the Academy is super duper lucky that that film had a German production company so that it was able to be submitted by Germany.
because it would have been just a terrible look if this very well-acclaimed film with this amazing story behind it just couldn't get nominated for the Oscars because it was too critical of its own government. Like, that's a bad look.
Okay, so some of the issues we're talking about here include that countries can only submit one movie. Who decides which movie that is? Anything else that's like sort of a sticking point in the international feature category?
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