by Brian Susbielles

Director Mohammad Rasoulof is just the latest Iranian director to face sanctions and flee from Iran’s continuous repression. Having been arrested in 2022 and banned from filmmaking, Rasoulof shot the movie in secret, acknowledged at the beginning of the film by saying one must find a way when there is no way forward. Rasoulof made Sacred Fig, and when Iran learned of its intended premire at Cannes, everyone was banned from leaving the country to promote it. Rosoulof was sentenced to prison; however, he was able to escape the country, reaching a German consulate where he once lived and was able to travel out to Germany where he currently lives in exile. (The film is Germany’s selection for Best Internation Feature at the Oscars.)

You have to appreciate those artists who risk their freedom for speaking the truth. It is a continuous battle in some of these countries to tell their story in defiance of what the regime wants out there. Rasoulof’s story surrounds the student protests and violent crackdowns in 2022 over the complusorary hijab women are forced to wear. Iman (Missagh Zareh) is a lawyer who is given a special job as an investigating judge who has to sign off mulitple death warrants against those dissidents. He understands that while it pays more and gives the family a bigger home to be in, it puts a target on his back as the protests continue to spread. As a precaution, he is given a gun but is told not to lose it. 

Iman’s wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) and their daughters Rezvan and Sana (Mahsa Rostami & Setareh Maleki, respectively) are more than aware of what is happening and Iman can’t keep them away from the truth. Social media posts, many of them real and used throughout the film, show ground zero the violence inflicted among those speaking out in contrast to state-run media who refer to the protesters as terrorists. The girls are starting university, the source of where most of these protesters come from, and one of their friends is seriously injured when they are struck by police buckshot. There, it becomes obvious that whatever their father is doing, he is very much in the wrong. 

The paranoia builds in Iman when the special gun he is given to protect himself vanishes and looks to his family on who took it. It becomes a tight chamber drama as it carries on deep into its 168 minute runtime, but it doesn’t drag and keeps pushing the story forward. The intensity rages on as the father becomes the regime upon his own family, terrorizing them like the regime wants him to. Iman turns on a video camera on his family to force a confession and locking them up is bringing work home, the kind which is always toxic and surreal when the thing being feared is now with them. 

The Seed Of A Sacred Fig is about the dangers of keeping secrets and loyalty to a government that has no acceptance of freedom. Even in a household, a family can find itself torn apart by where values lie. This is a middle-class family where the girls are into more secular, Western values in contrast to the theocracy’s demand for strict Islamist values. Rasoulof reinforces the terror of Iran as they attacked him multiple times and chased him out of the country, possibly for life, and the final montage of the protests is a reminder that this is a battle which will continue on.

4 1/2 stars

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