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The German film academy has issued new criteria for the German film awards that will make it easier for international productions with significant local creative input to qualify for the country’s top film honors, called the Lolas.

Under the new regulations, any film can qualify for the national awards if at least 25 percent of its financing, along with sufficient creative input, comes from Germany. The academy has also broadened the group of creatives it considers significant, giving equal weight to a movie’s director and its screenwriter, and allowing the contribution of actors or behind-the-scenes talent to be counted in determining whether a film qualifies as “German” for the sake of the awards.

A film with at least 50 percent German financing can qualify for the Lolas if its director or screenwriter and at least one of its leading producers are German nationals or based in Germany. The film also...

September 5 took top honors at the German Film Awards, or Lolas, held in Berlin Friday night.

Tim Fehlbaum’s real-life thriller, based on the terrorist attacks on the 1972 Munich Olympics, picked up nine Lolas, including for best director, best editing, best cinematography, best sound design, best screenplay, best makeup and best production design.

Leonie Benesch won best supporting actress for her performance as a translator for the U.S. television network broadcasting the attacks live to the world. September 5 premiered at the Venice film festival last year before becoming an awards contender and landing a best original screenplay Oscar nomination for Fehlbaum, Moritz Binder and Alex David.

Accepting his best director prize, Fehlbaum praised his German team, and, with a side swipe at Donald Trump and his promised tariffs on “foreign films,” noted that “they can raise the tariffs as high as the want, there is not reason to make films anywhere else [than here].”

Wolfram Weimer,...

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Hulu is ready with an entertainment-packed May this year. The upcoming month will see the release of the much-anticipated comedy series Adults and the return of Hulu’s one of the most popular series, Nine Perfect Strangers. Just like every month, Hulu is ready to overload you with great content. So, we’re here to tell you about the 10 new movies and TV shows coming to Hulu in May 2025.

Escape (May 3) Credit – Plus M Entertainment

Escape is a South Korean action thriller film directed by Lee Jong-pil from a screenplay co-written by Kwon Seong-hwi and Kim Woo-geun. The 2024 film follows Lim Gyu-nam, a North Korean soldier who defects to South Korea and is soon finds himself being chased by a ruthless North Korean Major. Escape stars Lee Je-hoon, Koo Kyo-hwan, and Hong Xa-bin.

Insidious: The Red Door (May...

Oscar contenders September 5 and The Seed of the Sacred Fig, and Andreas Dresen’s historic drama From Hilde, With Love are the frontrunners for this year’s German Film Awards, also called the Lolas, Germany’s equivalent of the Oscars.

September 5, Tim Fehlbaum’s real-life thriller based on the terrorist attacks on the 1972 Munich Olympics, picked up 10 nominations, including for best film and best director, as well as a supporting actress nom for Leonie Benesch, who plays a translator for the U.S. television network broadcasting the attacks live to the world.

Second and third in the running are Dresen’s From Hilde, With Love, which picked up seven Lola nominations, including for best film and best director, with Mohammad Rasoulof’s Iranian drama The Seed of the Sacred Fig right behind with six.

Rasoulof’s depiction of an Iranian family torn apart by conflicting loyalties to an increasingly oppressive Tehran regime,...

Having considered the death penalty in Iran from a number of different angles in There Is No Evil, Mohammad Rasoulof includes the subject as a background note in the Oscar-nominated Seed Of The Sacred Fig. His thriller is driven by the protests surrounding Mahsa Amini, who died in the custody of Iran’s morality police after being arrested for the ‘improper’ wearing of a hijab. A film that takes no prisoners in its own assessment of the patriarchy - and which is peppered with genuine footage of the brutality of the security services in the country - it is grittily compelling even if its last act feels overlong and plays out in formulaic thriller territory.

The death penalty is part of the daily routine for Iman (Missagh Zareh), a civil servant who has just been promoted to “investigator” after two decades, a stepping stone which he hopes will lead to his becoming.

Mohammad Rasoulof is now comfortably able to participate in the stateside awards season for his 2025 Best International Feature Oscar nominee, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.”

But that was not an initial certainty for the Iranian Cannes-winning director, who fled his native country’s persecution (and repeated sentencing) for Germany after completing the film’s Tehran-based production in early spring 2024. Since then, he’s promoted the politically charged and institution-defying film, which entwines the actual Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran of 2022 with the fictional story of a Revolutionary Court judge (Missagh Zareh) whose gun goes missing, and how that impacts his two teenage daughters, played by Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki). The girls, who are embedded in those protests as shown through actual cell phone footage of the demonstrations, may be responsible for the gun’s disappearance.

Representing Germany where Rasoulof edited the film, the powerful “The Seed of the Sacred Fig...

What a gem of a movie coming from Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof in The Seed of the Sacred Fig, an understated yet powerful political drama unfolds in a deliberate slow-burn approach. It may run nearly three hours but Rasoulof’s absorbing direction somehow manages to keep me engaged throughout the movie.

While it opens with an attention-grabbing moment of bullets hitting a table as we see Iman (Missagh Zareh) is given a gun due to the risky nature of his newly promoted job as an investigating judge amidst the political turmoil and civil unrest in Tehran, one would easily expect the story will be told from his perspective. Instead, Rasoulof chooses to subvert that expectation by focusing on Iman’s wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) and their two teenage daughters Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki) instead.

Initially, I thought this was going to be a long-winded filler that would...

Iranian writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof’s new blood-freezing film The Seed Of The Sacred Fig was shot in complete secrecy without the totalitarian government’s knowledge or approval. This explains why the characters, a man of the Establishment, his wife, and daughters, look so disturbingly stricken in the film’s most chilling moments of insubordination and retaliation.

This is not an easy film to watch. Its slow-burn treatment of authoritarianism and bullish approach to officialdom’s dumb, unquestionable fascism tend to throw us off course. But then we settle down to witness what can only be perceived as the rapid decline of values and the complete collapse of the conscience. It gets sobering and scary.

There is a longish sequence where Iman’s wide cleans out a grisly facial wound of a girl who has been shot at. It is terrifying not so much for the sight of an open wound...

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for the international film release of “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” written and directed by Iranian Mohammad Rasoulof. In Chicago release since December 27th, and in select theaters nationwide. See local listings.

Missagh Zareh is Iman, a family man and lawyer who is promoted to judge in the theocratic regime of Iran, thrilling his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), who anticipates a better apartment, and even tells daughters Rezvan and Sana (Masha Rostami and Setareh Maleki) even though having this knowledge might be risky. When protests break out on campuses, regarding women rejecting the wearing of hijabs, the daughters are involved, and the family’s status and lives become in danger. Key to all this is a gun that disappears from the apartment, which eventually leads to the family escaping to a country home.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is...

The career of director Mohammad Rasoulof has been interrupted by jail sentences for his filmmaking, deemed “propaganda against the system” by the Iranian theocracy. His latest gripping drama takes its title from a type of plant that flourishes by strangling a host tree – an unambiguous metaphor for the public protests against the Islamic State in Iran.

Rasoulof’s new film is, like many of his previous projects, a complex thriller and piece of docu-fiction. It was filmed in secrecy earlier this year in and around Tehran. Under threat of another prison term, Rasoulof fled in exile to Germany, where post-production was completed. And now the film is Germany’s submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar.

Winner of a special prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, “Sacred Fig” concerns a judge (Missagh Zareh) on the secretive revolutionary court, whose occupation puts him at odds with his daughters (Mahsa Rostami...

In Mohammad Rasoulof’s Cannes Special Award-winning “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” the central figure, Iman (Missagh Zareh), is a lawyer whose appointment to the Revolutionary Court in Tehran creates a fear and paranoia that pits him against his own family. This type of man was one Rasoulof knew well; he’d spent years dealing with Iranian interrogations, prisons, threats, and force. He had to produce “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in secret, sending footage to Germany to be edited. Rasoulof himself soon followed after receiving an eight-year prison sentence that included a flogging.

Speaking in a recent interview with the Los Angles Times, the Iranian filmmaker described making a film in secret as a similar practice to drug trafficking.

“Of course, we were only smuggling human values,” he said. Adding later of Germany’s support of the film in making it their Oscar submission, Rasoulof said, “They...

After “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” won a special jury prize at Cannes and wowed audiences at Telluride, Toronto, and New York, filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof revealed more of the incredible journey he took to not only secretly film the movie in Tehran, but to edit it in Hamburg. There, Andrew Bird cut the film throughout production via scraps of camera proxies that could be sent out when the internet connection was strong. He did not know a word of Persian, and worked with a dated version of the screenplay.

Rasoulof had been under threat from the Iranian government for the past 15 years, as Iran’s revolutionary court gave him three prison sentences and banned him from making films or leaving the country. Thus he was unable to attend the 2020 Berlin Film Festival when his film “There Is No Evil” won the top prize, nor could he participate in the 2023 Un Certain Regard jury.

In September 2022, a 22-year-old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini was killed by authorities. She was arrested for alleged non-compliance with the country’s mandatory hijab laws, subsequently collapsing and dying while in their custody. The Iranian government denied any brutality and blamed her death on a pre-existing medical condition, but the young women of Iran knew better.

Amini’s death sparked the Jina uprising. Those young women led their peers, armed with cell phones and social media, in massive protests against an oppressive regime terrified of losing their firm grasp on the country.

At the time of the demonstrations, director Mohammad Rasoulolf was in prison for criticizing that same government. The movement––with its brave, youthful contingent––inspired the filmmaker, who decided to set his next film amid a fictionalized version of this uprising.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig depicts a clash of generations––the established elders, protecting their institutionalized and reactionary ideology,...

“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” released in limited theaters on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024, so now is the perfect time to check out some of its glowing critics’ reviews.

First up, a bit of a primer. This Persian language political thriller comes from Iranian writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof, but it’s actually Germany’s Oscars submission for Best International Feature because Rasoulof has fled political persecution in his native country. The plot follows an investigating judge (Missagh Zareh) who grapples with paranoia amid political unrest in Tehran. When his gun disappears, he suspects his wife (Soheila Golestani) and daughters, and imposes fearful measures that strain family ties all while societal rules crumble.

During the Cannes Film Festival, Rasoulof discussed the government’s targeting of him and his films in an interview with The Guardian, saying, “Like any other dictatorship or totalitarian system, they want absolute control over images they don’t like...

This review was originally published on September 6, 2024 as a part of our Toronto International Film Festival coverage.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig begins as a chamber drama, taking place primarily in the apartment of one family. Iman (Missagh Zareh) is a faithful lawyer working for the Revolutionary Court in Tehran and, when promoted to investigator, he must compromise his concept of justice and fall in line with Iran's regime by approving death sentences without thorough oversight. His daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki), and their mother, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), exist largely in his periphery, though it's this trio that the film is most interested in.

A compelling drama set in Tehran during a period of political upheaval follows Iman, an investigating judge, whose life spirals into chaos when his gun disappears. Suspecting his own familywife Najmeh and daughters Rezvan and SanaIman enforces harsh measures at home, reflecting...

Director Mohammad Rasoulof has long criticized the Iranian government, to the point of being exiled from the country, often depicting the ways his theocratic rulers ensnare ordinary people in ethically compromised and isolated lives. His latest film, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, shows how those compromises bear out in the home.

While dissident filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof sat in an Iranian prison in 2022—his fourth of such stints—the world outside the walls changed. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement started with anger against compulsory hijab rules but quickly became a catchall for a variety of dissatisfactions brewing within Iran. Upon his release, Rasoulof knew he had to respond to the movement’s mobilization of citizens for freedom.

The film that resulted, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, captures the hope for major change and the danger of the status quo. Without resorting to broad archetypes, Rasoulof distills the macro conflicts embroiling Iranian society into the micro unit of a single family. Iman (Missagh Zareh) devotes himself to his judgeship in the Islamic Revolutionary Court to the extent that he’s assigned a handgun for protection. But when the weapon goes missing, his increasing paranoia leads him to suspect the women in his household are behind the disappearance.

On a cool fall night in October, just hours after Iran had launched rockets at targets in Israel, one of the Islamic Republic’s most famous dissidents sat a New York hotel restaurant and wondered if he’d ever get back home.

Mohammad Rasoulof had made one of the most politically potent feature films about the country in years — at great risk to his life — and all he wanted was to be back in the country he hopes to change.

“I walk in the U.S. or Europe and see people who are not me and ask myself: Can I belong? I want to be home,” the 51-year-old noted via a translator, a youthful dance in his eye given the ordeals he’s faced. “But it was more important to me to finish this project.”

“This project” is The Seed of the Sacred Fig, and it would be hard to...

The Seed of the Sacred Fig opens with a stark and chilling note to audiences. The film had to be shot in secret. Celebrated Iranian auteur Mohammad Rasoulof had already been arrested multiple times by the oppressive Islamic regime. He, his superb cast, and the production team literally risked death to tell this truly harrowing story. Horrifying social media footage intercuts Rasoulof's troubling narrative to reveal the deadly real world consequences of what happens to dissenters in a closed society with a brutal theocracy.

Iman (Missagh Zareh) returns late to a small two-bedroom apartment he shares with his wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), and their two teenage daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and her younger sister, Sana (Setareh Maleki). Najmeh has dinner and tea dutifully waiting for her beloved husband of more than 20 years. Iman brings important news. The Revolutionary Court has promoted him to an investigative judge. He's also been issued a gun for personal protection.

“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” isn’t just one of the best films of 2024, but most certainly one of the bravest. Despite facing imprisonment in his home country of Iran, writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof crafted a probing examination of his country’s current political climate that asks deep questions about loyalty, familial obligations, and justice. The 168-minute running time might seem to suggest a grandiose epic, but remarkably, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is a rather tight, contained thriller. The claustrophobia becomes palpable as Rasoulof somehow manages to heighten the suspense within what was already a very stressful situation.

The film centers on the Iranian lawyer, Iman (Missagh Zareh), who is finally given a major promotion after years of hard work and service when he is appointed as an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court. The position is not only a role of great importance but one that...

If measured by real-world implications, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” might be the most important film of the year. On Monday, Neon released the trailer for Iranian writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof’s political thriller, which is Germany’s submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature because Rasoulof has fled political persecution in his native country.

Rasoulof is one of Iran’s most acclaimed filmmakers; his 2020 film “There Is No Evil” won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. His outspoken criticism of the Iranian government has led to him serving multiple prison terms. Before “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” premiered at Cannes this year, the Islamic Republic sentenced Rasoulof to eight years in prison, flogging, a fine, and confiscation of his property for protesting the regime, which he does through his films as well as public statements. After that, he fled Iran and made it to Germany,...

Almost all of the Best Actor winners at this century’s 23 Academy Awards ceremonies have ticked at least one of these two boxes: they were over 40 or portraying a real-life fellow. [The only exceptions: Russell Crowe (“Gladiator”) and Jean Dujardin (“The Artist”) who were 36 and 39 respectively when they won for playing fictional characters.] Of this year’s leading contenders for Best Actor all but one (who stars in a long-awaited sequel to a Best Picture champ) tick at least one of those two boxes. (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Actor.)

Ralph Fiennes, 61, is devilishly delightful as a cardinal in Edward Berger‘s thriller “Conclave.” It’s been almost three decades since he was last at the Oscars for his starring role in the Best Picture winner “The English Patient.” His only previous bid was for his scene-stealing role in the 1994 champ “Schindler’s List.”

Colman Domingo, 54, reaped his first...

Isabelle Huppert, Hong Sang-soo favourite stars in New York Film Festival highlight A Traveler’s Need Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (co-written with Mona Fastvold and Silver Lion Best Director winner at the Venice International Film Festival), starring Adrien Brody with Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Stacy Martin, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Emma Laird, Isaach De Bankolé, and Alessandro Nivola; Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed Of The Sacred Fig with Soheila Golestani, Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki, Niousha Akhshi, and Missagh Zareh; Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April (Special Jury Prize in Venice) with Ia Sukhitashvili, plus Hong Sang-soo’s By The Stream, starring Kwon Haehyo, Kim Minhee, and Cho Yunhee and his A Traveler’s Needs (winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival) starring Isabelle Huppert, round out the five early bird highlights in the Main Slate program...

Writer-director Mohammed Rasolouf’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, the dissident Iranian filmmaker’s follow-up to 2020’s Golden Bear-winning There Is No Evil, is another clear-eyed account of the sacrifices and moral compromises forced on ordinary people by his homeland’s oppressive regime. The state’s affinity for capital punishment is again a target of Rasolouf’s ire, but he also has in his sights bourgeois complacency, the tyranny of traditional values, and, above all, the cruel machinations of Iran’s patriarchal culture.

As the film opens, state investigator Iman (Missagh Zareh) and his wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), are tentatively celebrating his recent promotion, but their satisfaction with his hard-earned career advancement proves to be short-lived, as the government’s enforcement of strict hijab laws leads to widespread protests and their subsequent brutal suppression. Iman is forced to approve an ever-mounting number of death penalty orders for arrested youths,...

Filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof said his decision to flee Iran on foot this month was necessary with the release of his new film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” imminent, and he knew while making the movie that new charges would likely br brought against him.

“There was tremendous pressure on my shoulders. I kept thinking, well if I’m arrested while making the film, I’ll spend at least five years in prison. And then obviously, I knew this film would lead to other charges against me,” he told reporters during a press conference at Cannes on Saturday.

Because of that pressure, Rasoulof asked industry colleagues in other countries if they would carry on work on the film if he were arrested before he could leave. He made the decision to go after he learned that Iran’s secret police planned to target others who worked on the movie, too.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig, the new film from Iranian dissident director Mohammad Rasoulof, may or may not be honored tonight when the Cannes jury hands out its awards. But at the press conference for the film on Saturday, Rasoulof displayed his own heroism.

The director used his press conference to call out Iran’s authoritarian regime and to rally his fellow filmmakers to resist.

“My only message to Iranian cinema is don’t be afraid of intimidation and censorship in Iran,” said Rasoulof. “[The regime is] afraid. They’re afraid, and they want us to feel afraid; they want to discourage us. But don’t let yourself be intimidated … but don’t fear the authorities. You have to believe in your liberty. We have to fight for a dignified life.”

Rasoulof embodies this fight. The director fled Iran by foot a few weeks ago, escaping after the regime sentenced him to 8 years in prison.

Mohammad Rasoulof reflected on his decision to flee Iran at the Cannes Film Festival press conference for his latest film, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” on Saturday.

Rasoulof received news of the charges against him in the final weeks of shooting, but decided to risk arrest and finish the film before leaving the country. “Obviously, there was tremendous pressure on my shoulders,” Rasoulof said of the decision. “I kept thinking, well if I’m arrested while making the film, I’ll spend at least five years in prison. And then obviously, I knew this film would lead to other charges against me.”

He said he “counted on the slow pace of the legal administration” in order to wrap the project, and contacted his colleagues abroad to make sure they could bring the film to the finish line in the event of his arrest. Then, he was made aware that...

“The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Mohammad Rasoulof’s latest film that he received an eight-year prison sentence from Iranian authorities for making, earned a rapturous 12-minute standing ovation at its Cannes Film Festival premiere on Friday. Rasoulof risked his life by appearing at the premiere as he fled Iran for Europe on May 13 to avoid going to prison.

There was undeniable applause as the film’s credits began to roll (though it is Variety‘s policy to begin timing the standing ovation once the house lights come up), with Rasoulof getting teary and waving enthusiastically to the balcony. Ali Abbasi, the director of fellow competition title “The Apprentice,” stood next to Rasoulof and encouraged the crowd to keep clapping — not that they needed it, as their cheers just seemed to get louder and louder. There was even a sign in the audience reading “Femme! Vie! Liberté!” (“Woman! Life! Freedom!

The exiled director’s story of officialdom’s misogyny and theocracy in his home country may be flawed, but its importance is beyond doubt

Mohammad Rasoulof is a fugitive Iranian director and dissident wanted by the police in his own country, where he has received a long prison sentence and flogging. Now he has come to Cannes with a brazen and startling picture which, though flawed, does justice to the extraordinary and scarcely believable drama of his own situation and the agony of his homeland.

It’s a movie about Iranian officialdom’s misogyny and theocracy, and sets out to intuit and externalise the inner anguish and psychodrama of its dissenting citizens – in a country where women can be judicially bullied and beaten for refusing to wear the hijab.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig begins as a downbeat political and domestic drama in the familiar style of Iranian cinema,...

A Man Of Integrity (Lerd) Big World Pictures Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten Director: Mohammad Rasoulof Screenwriter: Mohammad Rasoulof Cast: Reza Akhlaghirad, Soudabeh Beizaee, Nasim Adabi, Zeinab Shabani, Missagh Zareh, Zhila Shahi, Majid Potki Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 5/26/22 Opens: June 17, 2022 In the Middle East, […]

The post A Man Of Integrity Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

It would be a mistake to take the synopsis for Abed Abest’s Killing the Eunuch Khan at face value. This is not a film about a serial killer in the generic sense of the word. Khan (Ebrahim Azizi) isn’t some cult leader à la Charles Manson sending his disciples into the world to murder people in his name. Nor is he a monster in the vein of Jigsaw, entrapping victims to do his dirty work in the hope that doing so will earn them their freedom. Khan doesn’t even appear onscreen until about a third of the way through, ushering in a fracturing of focus that moves our attention from a single vantage point towards an unexplainable overlapping of time and space. You must think bigger.

Who else can be considered a serial killer pulling strings of others to kill in their name? A better question might...