The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a testament to the indomitable determination and courage of its award-winning Iranian director, Mohammad Rasoulof. Despite being jailed twice by the Iranian government for his filmmaking, Rasoulof persisted in his mission to tell the stories of his people. He made this new law-breaching movie in secret and fled his home country in exile after being sentenced to eight years in prison, whipping, and the seizure of his property.

 

The film is set against the backdrop of the 2022 protests and civil unrest in Tehran following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died under suspicious circumstances after being arrested by the police for not wearing a proper hijab. The story zooms in on a household of four living in a small apartment in Tehran: Iman, newly promoted to investigating judge, hopes this new role will bring more privilege and comfort to his family, which includes his wife Najmeh and their two daughters, Rezvan, a university student, and Sana, a teenager. Initially, Iman’s moral qualms are confined to his private moments, kept entirely to himself. As protests fill the streets with crowds of students and women, the sisters inevitably experience the oppressive regime's threatening encroachment on their lives and begin to question the brutality and legitimacy of the ruling power. The missing gun then shatters Inman's walls of trust, merging his political role on behalf of the regime and spreading the same tension into his close family.

 

The film transitions seamlessly between a tense, intimate family drama and disturbing glimpses of real footage into the macroscopic reality, effectively informing audiences of the historical context of the tension while telling an absorbing, believable story. It vividly lays out how the oppressions of Iran's theocratic regime divide the government and its people and fester paranoia, fear, and distrust among the two opposing sides. It also depicts how ordinary people, when threatened, rise up with the courage to reason with the power and their indestructible striving for human rights and freedom. 

 

The climax of the family drama powerfully transcends to a great height when the family converges for a final confrontation, epitomising the Iranian government and its people, leading to an inevitable, hopeful ending where patriarcal and theocratic oppression collapse hand in hand. The striking cinematography of the last scene features the one-thousand-year-old mud-brick village of Kharanaq, standing proudly and solemnly on a hillside - a vibrant, unforgettable note from our exile filmmaker on the enduring spirit of the Iranian people and their civilization, and the beauty of his beloved home country despite the ongoing political chaos.

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The Seed of the Sacred Fig, crafted by a director in exile, is a powerful and deeply moving film that intertwines a family's breakdown with the political turmoil in Iran.