The short film marks first work Rasoulof has shot outside Iran since his escape in 2024

By Nick Vivarelli

Variety

Iranian auteur Mohammad Rasoulof’s new work “Sense of Water” – which is the dissident director’s first film since “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” – has been picked up for global distribution by the Berlin and Lyon-based sales company Films Boutique.

The 39-minute “Sense of Water” short, which is premiering at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, also marks the first film Rasoulof has shot outside Iran. It reflects his personal journey since escaping to Germany in May 2024 after receiving a jail and flogging sentence from Iranian authorities for making “Sacred Fig,” which won the Special Jury prize at Cannes.

In “Sense of Water,” an Iranian writer living in exile, retreats with his former lover, Nazanin, to a glass cabin “in the northernmost reaches of the world,” as the synopsis puts it.

Popular on Variety

“There, in the silence of the polar night, he intends to say goodbye. Despite facing a long prison sentence, Ali has decided to return to Iran — to continue the struggle he once left behind,” it adds.

“My lived experience in exile was the starting point for this story,” Rasoulof said in his directors’ statement. “I suddenly realized that the first thing I had lost was the ability to feel words in a deep, immediate, and intimate way in a second language.”

“A person in exile, striving to build a new life, finds themselves distanced from their most fundamental emotions; as if exile is not only the absence of homeland, but a rupture between words and feelings, between language and experience.”

Commented Films Boutique CEO Jean-Christophe Simon: “We’re incredibly proud to continue our collaboration with Mohammad Rasoulof and our friends at Run Way pictures, following the great success of ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig.” He further noted that “its subject sadly resonates with the current actuality.”

“Sense of Water” is clearly a very timely work given the recent killings of thousands of protesters in Rasoulof’s homeland. The film was produced by Amin Sadraei, Rozita Hendijanian, and Mani Tilgner via Hamburg’s Run Way Pictures. It is supported by the Displacement Film Fund recently launched by Cate Blanchett), the Hubert Bals Fund, and the Moin Film Fund Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein.