Mohammad Rasoulof, Shahrbanoo Sadat Push Back on Idea of Separate Oscar Category for Exiled Filmmakers as Cate Blanchett’s Displacement Film Fund Hits Tokyo

Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and Iranian-born Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat pushed back on the idea of a standalone Oscar category for exiled filmmakers, speaking at the Tokyo International Film Festival as Cate Blanchett’s Displacement Film Fund gave its first five short films their Japan premiere. The question followed the Academy’s recent rule change making exiled filmmakers eligible for the Oscars. The Academy’s top leadership was present at the festival this week. “I really do not like to be labeled, and even this label is displaced, you know, because I’m not seeing myself like I’m Shahrbanoo Sadat, the displaced filmmaker. This is funny, this is a joke to me,” said Sadat, whose fund-backed short is “Super Afghan Gym.” “I’m not sure if I would love to be in the category of displaced, even if they give me the Oscar.” Rasoulof, who directed the fund’s “The Sense of Water,” said that as a filmmaker he wanted to put all his energy into making films, and that from that point of view it might not matter much where they are shown. “If there are certain specific categories, then sometimes those could cause an issue, so I would really like to focus my efforts on closing the distance and being closer,” he said. Clare Stewart, managing director of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), whose Hubert Bals Fund manages the Displacement Film Fund, pointed out that Rasoulof’s own “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” nominated in the last Oscar cycle, was one of the first films to benefit from the change, and that it represented Germany. “And then what does that mean? What dialogue does that create? How does that open up our thinking more broadly about what the position of a displaced filmmaker or refugee filmmaker is in our social fabric?” Stewart said. “So I personally don’t feel there’s a need.” Blanchett, the fund’s co-founder, said everyone on the panel had welcomed the Academy’s ruling and the way it acknowledged the real situation facing artists around the world. “There’s so many wars and conflicts, and people displaced through no fault of their own, and often careers, artistic careers are interrupted. So the fact that the Academy is recognizing that, I think is, it sounds like a small thing, but it is very profound,” she said. The first cohort’s films have already had an Academy qualifying screening in Los Angeles, Blanchett said, with another set for New York in mid-November. “Of course for Academy considerations, but first and foremost so that yet another territory, the American territory, can see these extraordinary films,” she said. “I don’t want to be too trivial, but the film industry is very used to international co-productions,” Blanchett added. “The cultural diplomacy that happens within our own industry, I wish a lot of governments would model the same level of communication.” The fund backs filmmakers who are displaced themselves or who have a track record of telling authentic stories about displacement. It took shape at the UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum in December 2023, where Blanchett, a UNHCR goodwill ambassador for more than a decade, first met Yanai Koji, a director and senior executive officer at Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing. “When one in 70 people around the world is displaced, Koji-san and I and the other people at the Refugee Forum, including UNHCR, were saying, why aren’t these stories more in the mainstream? Why aren’t we talking about them? And it’s a chance to dispel the toxic narrative that is often around displaced persons’ experience,” Blanchett said. Stewart said the effort gathered pace in October 2024, when she told Blanchett about the Hubert Bals Fund, which IFFR has run for 30 years to support filmmakers in countries where infrastructure is thin or where getting a film backed is politically difficult. IFFR signed on to manage the new fund, which launched at the festival in January 2025. Its founding partners are Yanai’s production company Mastermind, Uniqlo, the Tama Family Foundation, the Amahoro Coalition and Dutch foundation Droom en Daad. The Spinoza Foundation came aboard as a main partner at IFFR this year. The first cohort, unveiled at Cannes in 2025, comprises Rasoulof, Sadat, Mo Harawe, Hassan Fazili and Maryna Er Gorbach. Their films premiered at IFFR in January and have also screened in London and El Gouna, with São Paulo on the festival run as well. A second cohort is now making its films. Blanchett said the filmmakers were given full freedom over subject and point of view, and their stories did not have to address displacement directly. “The Sense of Water” centers on a migrant’s solitude and the struggle to learn a new language. “Three years ago, I had no choice but to flee my hometown and seek refuge overseas. There I had a sense of isolation, and I began to question this sense of isolation, wanting to understand where that would come from,” Rasoulof said. Sadat was born in Iran to parents who fled the Soviet-Afghan War in 1979, moved at age 11 to a small village in central Afghanistan, and was evacuated to France and then Germany when Afghanistan collapsed. The fund approached her while she was editing “No Good Men,” a romantic comedy in which she ended up playing the lead after her actor withdrew three weeks before the shoot. That film opened the Berlin Film Festival and is set for release in Japan next year. “I wanted to talk about these feelings of not being comfortable in your first and last home: your body,” Sadat said of “Super Afghan Gym.” Japanese star Yakusho Koji, Cannes best actor winner for “Perfect Days,” a collaborator on Uniqlo’s Peace for All charity T-shirt project, was the surprise guest at a post-screening talk and described “The Sense of Water” as “a very quiet, calm film about love and hardships and deep hurt.” Sadat’s gym-set film, he said, “really brought a smile to my face.” Sadat said she only realized the film was being read as a comedy when critics called it one after its Rotterdam premiere. Blanchett had a question of her own for Yakusho: “When are we going to work together?”