This is a hard movie to watch, and as a result, a hard movie to write about. "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" is an Iranian film, written and directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, who has run afoul of Iran's censorship laws multiple times, and had to flee the country to escape a lengthy prison sentence when this film was chosen for the 2024 Cannes film festival. It takes place roughly in 2022, during the demonstrations and protests that came in the wake of the murder of Mahsa Amini.
A devout, honest man named Iman (Missagh Zareh) is promoted to be a judge in Iran's Revolutionary Court, which oversees major crimes including threats to the power of the state. This means Iman enjoys better living conditions, but also tighter restrictions on his family, and he is issued a gun for protection. His wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) does her best to keep their daughters in line - Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) who is attending college, and teenage Sana (Setareh Maleki) who lives at home. Despite their mother's efforts, the daughters both support the protests and are affected by the social unrest. Iman, faced with going against his principles as the protests escalate, becomes stressed and unstable. And then the gun goes missing.
The family becomes Iran in miniature - a paranoid authoritarian father, an oppressive mother trying to placate him, an older daughter who speaks out against the injustice she sees, and a younger daughter who is surrounded by too much violence not to be affected. Before the gun disappears or the social unrest erupts in Tehran, the tensions in the household are already high due to Iman's promotion. Najmeh seems to be endlessly criticizing her daughters, and pressures them to stop associating with a friend, Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi) from a more permissive family. It's Najmeh who is the crux of the film, who starts experiencing doubts when the situation worsens. She has to face the fact that she can do everything right and still be in danger.
Mohammad Rasoulof is not a director I'm familiar with, but he's taking his cues from fellow Iranian filmmakers like Jafar Panahi, who are fiercely critical of the current regime, and not afraid of tackling major social issues head-on. The making of this film was reportedly an ordeal - Rasoulof filmed it in secret while under a filmmaking ban, and was convicted on propaganda charges during its production. He uses actual footage from the protests interspersed throughout "The Seed of the Sacred Fig," the aspect ratio changing so it looks like we're watching events unfold on phones along with the girls. These images are also banned in Iran, of course. They give the film an incredible immediacy and heighten the sense of danger and disruption.
The strongest parts of the film are the first two thirds, where we watch the family react to multiple crises and reach their breaking points. Najmeh starts out doing her best to play peacemaker, finding justifications for everyone's behavior, and ignoring what she can't fix. I find it fascinating the way that Rasoulof gets to the heart of the conflict, which is not about religion or moral values, but about living in a society built on fear and absolute control. There's a bleak sequence where Najmeh and her daughters are questioned by a family friend who is also a government interrogator. From the fear tactics and doublespeak, it's clear that mindless obedience is more important than actually finding out the truth. Iman soon becomes so warped by his work as part of the unjust legal system that he views all dissent as rebellion.
What's so brilliant about the storytelling is that we're seeing all of this largely in the terms of a present-day domestic drama, contained within a single, instantly familiar family unit. The gradual breakdown of trust between Iman and his wife and daughters over the film's long running time is intense and upsetting. The last third of the film turns very melodramatic, and moves the action out of the city, which I thought was a misstep - we're suddenly in a different kind of story where the threats shift from psychological to physical. However, I understand why it was necessary thematically, because the film's critiques go beyond the current government. Putting the family's conflict against the backdrop of an abandoned village is a reminder that the current instability in Iran is part of a much longer and more complex history.
I doubt "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" will find much of an audience beyond the usual arthouse crowd, which is a shame. This is very watchable and accessible for an Iranian film, and very relevant to political unrest happening all over the globe right now. We don't get a lot of cinema this vital and this urgent, and it's absolutely remarkable that it was made at all.
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