Mohammad Rasoulof, the Iranian filmmaker who secretly left his country in 2024 after being sentenced to eight years in prison, will receive the Kurosawa Akira Award at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival. He will share the honor with director O Mipo. The two were chosen by a committee of filmmakers Yamada Yoji and Lee Sang-il, cinematographer Ashizawa Akiko and TIFF programming director Ichiyama Shozo.
Capcom Co., Ltd. backed the award’s return in 2022, after it had gone 14 years without being presented. Last year it went to Lee and Chloé Zhao. Rasoulof won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2020 for “There Is No Evil,” which later played at the 33rd TIFF.
His “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” took the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 2024, and as Germany’s entry it was later nominated for the Oscar for best international feature. He was still finishing that film when he had to flee Iran in secret, shortly before Cannes. He was jailed in 2010 while shooting a film and arrested again in 2022, then provisionally released after eight months.
He has shot many of his films in secret and smuggled them abroad to screen. The committee praised the “humanist perspective” of his recent work, “which portrays even those who perpetrate oppression as ordinary citizens.” “Receiving the Kurosawa Award is a great honor for me,” Rasoulof said. She made her feature debut in 2006 with “The Sakais’ Happiness.” “The Light Shines Only There” (2014) won her best director at the Montreal World Film Festival and was Japan’s Oscar submission.
After a nine-year gap in which she had two children, she came back with “Living in Two Worlds” (2024), which competed at Shanghai. Her latest, “How Dare You?” (2025), played in competition at Zlín. O said getting the award on the 20th anniversary of her debut left her grateful and humbled.
Though my progress has been slow, reaching the Kurosawa Akira Award is a stroke of fortune that makes me truly savor what a happy cinematic journey I have had,” she said. The festival will also show a selection of Kurosawa’s favorite films, along with two of his own. The lineup is Charles Chaplin’s “The Circus” (1928), 4K restorations of Kurosawa’s “Sanshiro Sugata” (1943) and “Ikiru” (1952), and Abbas Kiarostami’s “Where Is the Friend’s House?” (1987).
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