The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Now-exiled filmmaker Rasoulof skillfully interweaves political activism with the drama of a divided family in the Cannes 2024 Prix Spécial winner. In contemporary Iran, “The world has changed” – “But God has not”. 

It is this exchange between a worried woman and a conservative man that summarises the tensely driven The Seed of the Sacred Fig. Its first half is a tale ripped from the news headlines, as members of a family grapple with the social turbulence sparked by human rights abuses against women in recent years. Teenage daughters Rezvan and Sana are shaken by the uncertain fate of their friend Sadaf, who has been hurt and taken into police custody during a street demonstration. At the same time, their father, Iman, is promoted to the position of investigating judge, in which he is pressured to hastily convict arrested protestors. The film’s second half becomes a modern thriller in which the paranoid Iman turns, with increasing ferocity, against his wife and children. 

Filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, fled Iran to escape an 8-year prison sentence because of this film. Rasoulof traces a nightmarish progression from the rituals of everyday Iranian life to the intimate terror of a family divided by religious and political allegiances, and by a State apparatus that knows how to deform hearts and minds.

– Adrian Martin

Trailer

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