[Film Review] The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)

Shot surreptitiously in Iran, its footage smuggled to Germany for post-production, Iranian émigré filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s tenth feature THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG has a more sensational and film-worthy backstory might eclipse the film itself. Prosecuted by the Iranian government for his dissident voices and films, Rasoulof was sentenced to 8 years in prison prior to the film’s premiere in Cannes. He decided to flee from his homeland to Germany, attended the film’s premiere in person. His derring-do is munificently rewarded. The film wins a special prize in Cannes and now represents Germany for the upcoming competition in Oscar’s Best International Feature Film.

With the narrative exclusively and closely following a nuclear family of four - Iman (Zareh), recently exalted as an investigating judge of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, his devoted wife Najmeh (Golestani) and their two daughters Rezvan (Rostami), a collegian and Sana (Maleki), a high-schooler - and ample scenes set in their middle-class apartment, Rasoulof is cunning enough to use confined spaces to let the pall of repression seep through, compensating for the finitude of his ambulatory freedom (some sequences are shot via remote control). Meantime, frequently interspersing veracious images of the political protests throughout the main diegesis (including the ones in the wake of the death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman, in police custody in Tehran, on 16 September 2022) provides profuse physical evidences of the government’s high-handed suppression of the mostly young protesters.

Soon the family’s generational schism bobs its ugly head. After Sadaf (Akhshi), Rezvan’s best friend, is brutally assaulted by the indiscriminately pitiless riot police force on the street - her blood-splattered, disfigured face is a silent but reverberating indictment of the Establishment’s cruelty and evokes sympathy to anyone who possesses a proper moral compass - the two girls are increasingly politicalized by the ongoing atrocity, especially the elder Rezvan, who comes at loggerheads with her father during a family dinner (Rostami is fiercely assertive against an impassive but equally riveting Zareh). Either can convince each other because there is no easily discernible wrong or right between their disparate beliefs.

In the second half, Rasoulof effectively deploys a missing-gun mystery to further tear down the family’s normalcy, pitting the girls and eventually Najmeh, too, against Iman, who, beset by mounting paranoia and distrust for fear of losing his place in the sun, is not above to put his beloved ones through the wringer. The climax is set in the desert ruins in the historical Yazd region, with Iman chasing his escaped wife and daughters amid the ancient friable constructions, until a gun-point confrontation pushes things far over the moral boundary.

Perceived as a slow-burning, intricately processed, gradually awakening rebellion of the distaff side against a paternalistic patriarch, and by extension, against a Procrustean and theocratic polity, THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG is more than preaching to the choir of the Western-leaning demographic who is bigoted enough to believe any country which is not governed by the omnipotent and infallible“democracy” may just as well be stamped out on the surface of the planet, since Rasoulof’s insight and observation are far sharper and, in a way, more impartial, especially by dint of his characterizations of Iman and Najmeh.

Iman, who, however reluctantly, caves in to his ambition and a promise of life on the easy street and becomes an actual executioner of the government’s harsh crackdown (authorizing death sentences to the protesters without due investigation), is anything but a one-note villain. In fact, he has always been a loving and hard-working father, even when he goes to extremes, he would scarcely inflict physical harm on his daughters. Iman’s erratic behaviors are au fond, a desperate, radical reaction when a breadwinner’s livelihood is put on the line and his masculine pride is challenged and bruised. But psychologically, his unwarranted actions could only drive her wife and daughters further away, and that damage is irrevocable. Zareh gives off a substantially underplayed, all bottled-up interiority that looks forbidding, stoic, with anguish and disappointment smoldering underneath.

As for Najmeh, designated as a tougher nut to crack, much more reactive than her daughters, she exemplifies an ordinary woman’s deep-seated espousal of family value. As a homemaker, taking good care of her husband and two daughters is all her preoccupation and to defy her husband is the last thing we can ever expect of her. Thus, whatever can impel her to do that, should be a deal breaker, which, in hindsight, is the severance of their marital trust when Iman begins to suspect his faithful bedfellow. For my money, Golestani is the MVP among the quartet, projecting Najmeh’s glacial transition to a nicety and conveying the sense of betrayal and disillusion with subtlety and empathy.

The film - composed with deft efficiency and clear-eyed solicitude, in addition to a mesmerically Islamic accompaniment from Karzan Mahmood - expertly parses out a far-reaching drama about how dangerously benign family bonds can dissolve into an embittered tangle and morality can be compromised by the double whammy of the ideological discrepancy and the external pressure. In the event, Rasoulof, whose cinematic sensibility has yet reached the virtuosity of his more eminent compatriots like Farhadi, Panahi (Jafar the father, not the son Panah), let alone Kiarostami, comports himself more as a true-sayer than an irrational agitator with THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG and let’s hope his crusade will continue on the right path.

referential entries: Panah Panahi’s HIT THE ROAD (2021, 7.0/10); Abbas Kiarostami’s CLOSE-UP (1990, 8.3/10); Asghar Farhadi’s ABOUT ELLY (2009, 8.2/10).

• English Title: The Seed of the Sacred Fig

• Original Title: Dane-ye anjir-e ma'abed

• Year: 2024

• Genre: Drama

• Country: Iran, France, Germany

• Language: Persian

• Director/Screenwriter: Mohammad Rasoulof

• Music: Karzan Mahmood

• Cinematography: Poona Aghababaei

• Editor: Andrew Bird

• Cast:

• Soheila Golestani

• Missagh Zareh

• Mahsa Rostami

• Setareh Maleki

• Niousha Akashi

• Reza Akhlaghirad

• Shiva Ordooie

• Amineh Mazrouie Arani

• Rating: 7.9/10