There is No Evil

Winner of the Golden Bear for best film at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival, Mohammad Rasoulof’s searing condemnation of his country’s justice system tells four stories centred around four separate state-sanctioned executioners, whose job it is to kill, for their daily wages, those condemned to death by a capricious and cold-blooded state. After his 2017 Cannes Film Festival entry, ‘A Man of Integrity’, Rasoulof was banned for life from filmmaking by the Iranian authorities, so this clandestinely shot feature took immense courage on his part to complete—and, knowing that, the film is doubly superb.

‘Rasoulof’s haunting new drama… reveals horrific truths about capital punishment in Iran, and its revelations are all the more trenchant given that the Iranian government carries out executions in secret, without public observers. Rasoulof’s feature… takes the place of impossible documentary reporting on the subject… “There Is No Evil” is the story of a country that’s haunted by the ghosts of its victims, who are more vital and whole than the killers who, in their living death, are society’s zombies.’—Richard Brody, The New Yorker