THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG ★★★★
(M) 168 minutes
The widespread animosity provoked by the Iranian regime tends to obscure the fact that a large section of the country’s population is well-educated, sophisticated and longing to rejoin the rest of the world in peace.
Soheila Golestani (left), Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki as mother and daughters in The Seed of the Sacred Fig.Credit: MIFF
Fortunately, Iran’s filmmakers are here to remind us. For decades, they have been risking prison and persecution to turn their national cinema one of the most powerful we have. With ingenuity and a subtle intelligence, they have used film to open a window on Iran’s so-called justice system, its family life and its shades of political thinking.
Writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof was facing the possibility of an eight-year prison sentence for his activism when he began shooting The Seed of the Sacred Fig in secret. When he finished, he had to flee the country to settle in Germany. The film has since rewarded him by winning the Jury Prize at Cannes as well as being nominated as Germany’s entry in this year’s Oscars.
Set during the women’s uprising which followed the death of Mahsa Amini after her arrest by Iran’s “morality police”, it’s one of the most forthright films to come out of the country in quite a while. Some Iranian directors work obliquely through metaphor and allegory to make their points. This one, too, has its metaphorical aspects, but Rasoulof has no interest in camouflage. He’s on the front line with a devastating political thriller about a family’s disintegration.
The script was inspired by time he spent in Evin prison, where one of his captors admitted how much he hated his job while lacking the courage to give it up. Out of this conversation came the character of Iman (Missagh Zare), who has just been promoted to the post of investigating judge when the film begins. His wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), is delighted, as are his daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami), a university student, and Sana (Setareh Maleki), who’s in high school. Then the women’s protests spill over on to the streets and Iman is pressured into signing a series of death warrants without even viewing the evidence. And at the same time, his daughters start to question the brutality of the regime’s crackdown.
For a while, it looks as if the script is about to broaden its focus and bring the family into direct conflict with the regime but Rasoulof has something more intimate in mind.
