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11 | 08 | 2024

Shah Rukh Khan Presents ‘Devdas’ at Locarno77

Shah Rukh Khan guest at the Locarno Film Festival presents his film “Devdas”.

10 | 08 | 2024

‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ Director Mohammad Rasoulof on Current State of Iran

Two decades after screening his debut feature The Twilight (Gagooman) in Locarno in 2003, renowned Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof returns to the festival, presenting his latest opus The Seed of the Sacred Fig on the Piazza Grande.

Mohammad Rasoulof returns to Locarno with a heavy heart, as the dissident auteur recently chose to flee his native Iran to escape an eight-year prison sentence for “intention of committing a crime against the country’s security”. The grave decision bookmarks the director’s long and arduous journey to make films within the borders of the totalitarian regime of Iran, which had already barred Rasoulof from picking up a camera in 2011, when his Goodbye (Be omid-e didar) screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. That film, about an attorney whose license is revoked by the government, was a cunning metaphor for the way Iranian artists had been forced into silence and compliance. Like fellow dissidents such as Jafar Panahi, Rasoulof nonetheless managed to work around those constraints to make some of the most significant works of contemporary Iranian cinema. Shrouded in secrecy and shot clandestinely with fake permits, his next films went straight for the jugular of the country’s authoritarian society.


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