Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s films bristle with rage about his country’s tyrannical treatment of its people. Rasoulof’s realist critiques, about themes ranging from state-sponsored assassinations to financial corruption, explore overweening oppression through the unblinking eyes of conscientious Iranians.
Rasoulof’s Oscar-nominated The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a clear-eyed examination of the most recent challenge to the theocratic state’s strictures on women. The 2024 production bears witness to the “Women, Life, Freedom” protest movement that began in 2022 against the mandatory wearing of the hijab in public. The custodial death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the religious moral police for being improperly attired, haunts the fictional female characters in The Seed of the Sacred Fig, as does Rasoulof’s own real-life imprisonment for his dissident views.
Missagh Zareh, who has regularly appeared in Rasoulof’s movies, plays a Tehran lawyer who is appointed as a judge to the Islamic Revolutionary Court. Iman is pleased – greater prestige, a bigger apartment – but is worried enough about his personal safety to start carrying a gun.
Iman’s wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) is excited too with Iman’s elevation, but her attention is diverted by their young daughters Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki). The standoff between state and citizenry following Mahsa Amini’s death has percolated into their new home. How can it not, when nearly every aspect of life in Iran is regulated and severe punishment follows disobedience?
Like his peer Jafar Panahi, Rasoulof expresses his political views through the design of his movies. Compelled to shoot without permission and under the threat of arrest, Rasoulof’s films often play out in confined spaces, where seethe arguments and counter-arguments, conformity and resistance, the yearning for freedom and the reality of invisible imprisonment.
Najmeh is torn between her loyalty towards Iman and her concern for her increasingly restless daughters. When Iman’s gun goes missing, an already fraught household reaches breaking point.
It’s difficult to separate the movie’s events from Rasoulof’s own runs-in with the Iranian government. Faced with yet another prison term in 2024, Rasoulof fled Iran, joining the numerous exiles who simply cannot bear living in their country anymore.
Rasoulof’s film, shot by Pooyan Aghababaei, throbs with claustrophobia, dread and hopelessness. Characters speak in hushed tones even in private. The sisters adopt the furtive manner of the underground activist in their home. The violence that Iman fears has entered the apartment – suggesting that despotism finally succeeds when it enters the domestic sphere.
The contrast between the women at home and in public, where they must veil themselves and dress modestly, is stark. Editor Andrew Bird splices in actual footage of brutal crackdowns on public demonstrations, giving the film urgency and potency.
The performances, especially by Soheila Golestani, are excellent. But the 168-minute film doesn’t work in its entirety.
Iman’s reaction, whether to his daughters or to the missing gun, isn’t entirely plausible. The unwieldy extended climax, which revolves around a trip taken by the family, undermines the consistently chilling nature of the scenes in Tehran.
It’s almost as if Rasoulof threw everything into his latest feature, unsure of whether he would get to make another film in his country again. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a brave and unsparing account of a country slow-throttling its people, made by a defiant filmmaker who has suffered too, like his characters. If the ending is a bit messy, there’s nothing tidy either about the brutal treatment of non-conformists in the real world.
