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‘Exhausting and extremely dangerous’: Mohammad Rasoulof on his escape from Iran

Exclusive: The director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig details how he discarded electronic devices and fled over the mountains on foot after authorities sentenced him to eight years in prison and flogging

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof escaped imminent imprisonment in Iran by discarding all trackable electronic devices and walking across a mountainous borderland on foot, the film-maker has told the Guardian in an exclusive interview. The west Asian republic saw large-scale protest against the clerical establishment that has ruled Iran since 1979 after the 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman detained for allegedly not properly wearing the Islamic headscarf. Even though he remains passport-less, he said German and French authorities were currently in talks to allow him to travel to the film festival on the Côte d’Azur ahead of next Friday’s premiere of The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which is running in the main competition.

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