For most filmmakers, winning awards is the destination. For Ramin Sohrab, it marked the beginning of a very different journey.

 

The Iranian-Finnish filmmaker, actor and lifelong martial artist spent close to a decade bringing Layers of Lies to life — the first Finnish-Iranian action film shot in Tehran. The project survived legal obstacles, a serious injury, a hospital stay he feared he might not survive and years of setbacks. It eventually reached audiences and won more than 50 international awards.

 

Searching for Somewhere to Belong

Ramin’s story begins long before cameras and film festivals. Born in Tehran and raised between Iran and Finland, he trained in Shaolin Wushu with his father from the age of four. The discipline stayed with him long after childhood.

 

Growing up between two cultures did not become the strength he once expected. Instead, he describes a constant search for approval, a need to prove he belonged somewhere.

 

“There was a lot of seeking and a lot of doing things to get approval, to get acceptance of my existence.” — Ramin Sohrab

 

 

Looking back, Ramin says making a Finnish-Iranian action film was partly an attempt to belong to one identity or the other. Moving to Los Angeles was another version of the same search: pursuing acceptance in a city that never quite gave him the feeling he expected.

 

Producing the Film Everyone Said Could Not Be Made

Layers of Lies was not simply an independent film that took a long time to finish. Securing permission to shoot in Iran took four years. Sanctions restricted access to much of the American equipment the production needed, so Ramin drove from Finland to Iran — a journey of eight or nine days — to help move the project forward.

 

At one point, he was arrested on suspicion of working for a foreign government. He broke his leg during filming, forcing production to pause for three years. When work resumed, he had to recast a role and reshoot scenes that had already been completed.

 

Then came COVID-19 and a hospital stay that nearly ended everything.

 

“The doctors keep coming to my room saying, if you don’t stop, you’re gonna die. Your lungs are expanded, your heart is expanded. So they basically tricked me every night by putting sleeping pills in my IV. I slept so many nights with the script in my hand.” — Ramin Sohrab

 

Even from his hospital bed, Ramin kept editing the script, cutting scenes to reduce a budget that was running out. Looking back, he recognises how willing he had become to sacrifice his health for the film. It was not simply stubbornness: he had convinced himself that, if he did not make it, nobody else would.

 

When Success Could No Longer Answer the Question

It is easy to assume that success changed everything for Ramin. Instead, after the film received recognition, a moment in London changed him in a way he had not expected.

 

He had dreamt of Hollywood and reached it. He had dreamt of making the film and finished it. Yet the feeling he had spent years expecting to follow those achievements never arrived.

 

“Everything I ever dreamed of came true, but the feeling I was expecting to feel, there was nothing. I couldn’t feel anything. I was like, ‘Is this it? I’m only 40, and this is it?’” — Ramin Sohrab

 

That moment, more than any award ceremony, shifted something in him. A belief system built on decades of seeking recognition stopped making sense, leaving him unsure what to believe next.

 

 

The Courage to Become Someone New

After returning to the US, Ramin took part in his first psilocybin ceremony. He describes it as the first time he properly encountered what he calls his conscious mind, distinct from the subconscious patterns that had shaped much of his life.

 

That experience led him to Puerto Rico, where he filmed his documentary My Journey Into Consciousness over seven days while exploring seven different ceremonial medicines he had not previously experienced.

 

He no longer treats the filmmaker, the martial artist and the seeker as separate identities. To him, they are different expressions of the same question.

 

“It lasted five minutes. The first thing I heard was, ‘What are you doing here again?’ I said, ‘I want to learn.’ It said, ‘There’s nothing I can teach you any more. Anything you want to see or feel, you can create it yourself. Now go create.’” — Ramin Sohrab

 

Brij’s central takeaway from the conversation is simple: asking who you are beneath everything you have built can take more courage than building it in the first place.

 

Watch or Listen to the Full Conversation

This article captures only part of Ramin Sohrab’s story. The full conversation with Brij Thankey explores his childhood between cultures, the decade-long struggle to make Layers of Lies, and why his most important work now reaches far beyond filmmaking.

 

Watch on YouTube, or listen on Spotify and Amazon Music.

 

More conversations like this are available at brijthankey.com.