The director took his life in his hands every day in Tehran that he convened people to make a film opposing the Iranian regime. When he was done, he went on the run, knowing that if he stayed, he’d end up in prison. He took the film with him as he sneaked across neighboring countries, eventually making it to safety in Germany.

Rasoulof arrived in Europe just before a premiere at the Cannes Film Fest in May, his body and the film relievedly intact. He is now based in Germany and has traveled to New York Film Fest.

Though more narrative than Jafar Panahi’s 2011 This Is Not a Film — which got around a ban by appearing to simply be about people dropping by the director’s home — the two movies tell a story of daring civil disobedience.

Then came the fight by the government’s proxy militias across the Middle East against Israel beginning Oct. 7, 2023, and the reprisals against it. May brought the sudden death in a helicopter crash of hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, leading to the election of the more moderate Masoud Pezeshkian in June — though how much wiggle room he has under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the 85-year-old cleric who runs the country, remains to be seen.

Rasoulof is part of a small group of dissident filmmakers — many of whom have had to flee Iran — making so-called “non-state projects” in the hope of bringing about liberal reforms. These are movies that do not pass through national censorship forces and their whitewashing of any regime criticism. (Rasoulof won the Berlinale’s Golden Bear in 2020 for his reform-minded death penalty drama There Is No Evil.) State projects show a rosy Iran where the fundamentalist government gives people a good life and can do no wrong. Non-state ones, of course, do no such thing.

A family drama and political parable, Rasoulof’s film concerns a recently promoted “investigative judge” named Iman (Missagh Zareh) — a rubber-stamper there to bureaucracy-wash the regime’s brutalities — and his brief hesitation before embracing his malevolent role full-on.

Sacred Fig centers on the activism of daughter Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami), who is becoming engaged with the Women, Life, Freedom protests. That activism leads to direct conflict with her father — and complicated bond with her younger sister, Sana (Setareh Maleki), and mother, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani).

It moves the film to a place of violent family division that is read as metaphor for the way Iranian crackdowns have fractured and imperiled the country itself.

Street scenes could only be shot with extreme caution, and usually involving the hijab, the veil for women whose removal is a symbol in the fight for liberation.

Getting footage out of the country, even for editing, wasn’t easy. Rasoulof was working with editor Andrew Bird, who lives in Berlin.

“I sometimes wouldn’t know where the footage would be, or if there would be any,” Bird says. He would go into a series of shadow accounts to retrieve it, as filmmakers tried to stay one digital step ahead of censors and government agents.

Rasoulof was handed an eight-year prison sentence for his efforts, and many in his cast and crew were questioned. His lawyer told him fighting such a sentence was impossible. All they could try was an appeal-based legal maneuver that might buy them several weeks. Rasoulof told him to pursue it. “It was just enough time to finish the film.”

When the prison date approached, Rasoulof ran.

While in prison the previous time, he met other dissidents skilled in the fugitive arts — and they would help him sneak out of the country, providing contacts and guidance on bypassing checkpoints.

It took Rasoulof two weeks to reach Germany. He sent edits back and forth as he went. The actors faced their own crucibles.

“I was fearful in taking on this role. But the anger was much greater,” Rostami says.

The young woman’s own journey to activism parallels that of the character. She was proud to act in state productions for years, but when the 2022 protests came around, she decided to only take on subversive projects like underground theater. Shortly after completing this film she, too, fled, with no idea if and when she can return to Iran.

The guilt Rasoulof bears for those he left behind is unbearable. While his immediate family is outside Iran, his sister remains there. She put her house up as collateral for his bail and lost it when he fled.

There also is guilt that he didn’t continue the protests from within. Rasoulof is trying to square the pain of exile with the pride of telling a story he could never have told if he stayed.