The Iranian filmmaker said his own 2010 imprisonment ended his reliance on metaphor, while Oh spoke about returning to directing after nine years raising two sons. Exiled Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof pointed to Jafar Panahi’s latest prison sentence as proof that Iranian cinema remains under repression, speaking at a Tokyo International Film Festival press conference for the Kurosawa Akira Award. Rasoulof and Japanese director O Mipo are this year’s recipients.
Rasoulof made the same shift himself after 2010, when he was arrested while making a film and sentenced to five years. Alone in a cell, he asked himself why anyone should go to prison for making a film. He began to see his reliance on allegory, a technique classical Persian poets used to shield themselves, as a form of self-protection.
I don’t need to run away anymore, so then I decided to tell things directly,” Rasoulof said. The selection committee was chaired by Yamada Yoji and also included director Lee Sang-il, cinematographer Ashizawa Akiko and festival programming director Ichiyama Shozo. The committee cited Rasoulof’s films about state repression of human rights.
It singled out “There Is No Evil” and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” for treating even the enforcers of oppression as ordinary citizens, and it also recognized his refusal to stop working despite pressure. Rasoulof grew up watching “Red Beard” on Iranian state television, more than 10 times by his own count. The Kurosawa film closest to him now, though, is “Dersu Uzala.” “Whenever I feel hopeless, or whenever I feel depressed, even now, I see ‘Dersu Uzala’ so that I can go back to my own life and I can find some hope,” he said.
The committee praised O for looking at people on society’s margins without passing moral judgment, starting with her 2006 debut “The Sakai’s Happiness.” It highlighted her unforced direction of children in “Being Good,” “Living in Two Worlds” and “How Dare You?” O had her first son in 2015 and expected to return to work quickly. She found that she could not make films and raise a child at the same time, and after her second son was born in 2020 she assumed her career was over. That changed when she watched the 2023 Japan Academy Film Prize ceremony on television.
Accepting the best actress award, Ando Sakura said plainly that filmmaking and child-rearing could not be done together. The remark convinced her she could pick up her career again, and she went on to make her first feature in nine years. O said she wants the industry to let crews put their own lives first, whether that means children, caring for sick relatives or anything else.
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