The Seed of the Sacred Fig
by George Wolf
Mohammad Rasoulof’s films have shown him to be an insightful storyteller. His backstory reveals a courageous activist who continues to endanger his own life and freedom in support of artistic expression.
His latest, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, weaves in important details and actual footage from protests that erupted in Iran after the government’s brutal killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022. As the narrative evolves from hushed family drama to frantic thriller, writer/director Rasoulof again shows his skill at turning intimate details into an allegory for oppression from a religious patriarchy in his homeland and beyond.
Iman (Missagh Zareh) has just been promoted to an Inspector’s post in Tehran (on the court that actually sentenced Rasoulof just three years ago). It’s a big moment for the family – Inspector is just one step below a judge – and Iman’s wife Najmeh (Sohelia Golestani) is hoping they’ll soon be awarded an apartment big enough for their teen-age daughters to each have their own bedroom.
Instead, Iman is awarded a gun.
Inspectors are involved in very serious cases. So serious that Iman must watch his back, Najmeh must not ask questions, and daughters Sana (Setareh Maleki) and Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) must choose their friends very carefully and stay off of social media.
Naturally, the girls have trouble adjusting and plead with their father to help when their friend Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi) gets caught up in student protests and is arrested. This is a delicate issue, indeed, but it is when Iman’s gun turns up missing from the home that fear and suspicion completely overtake the household.
The loss of his gun could ultimately send Iman to prison, and the father turns to desperate measures against his own wife and children to root out the culprit.
Often filming in secret, Rasoulof assembles the escalation of events so carefully, and the performances are so achingly real, that nearly every frame of the film’s two hour and forty-five minutes seems necessary. The young daughters ask the defiant questions their parents abandoned long ago, supported with subtlety by an Iranian filmmaker daring to show women without head coverings (even in their homes).
Rasoulof has now fled Iran, while Zareh and Golestani have both been banned from travel. The Seed of the Sacred Fig stands as a testament to their courage, and as a sobering act of revolution.
