The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Released 2024. Director: Mohammad Rasoulof

WHAT STARTS OFF AS A STORY ABOUT MORALS turns into a thriller and eventually a tragedy. Through the turn of events The Seed of the Sacred Fig reveals itself to be about justice, loyalty and political oppression.

Iman has been promoted to the post of investigator in Iran's Revolutionary Court, one step away from being appointed a judge. He’s glad and nervous; his wife Najmeh is relieved and excited. Finally, the family is moving up but in the meantime, they must be vigilant about their conduct and public perception of a life without blemish. Any scandal or misperception will derail their path up the social ladder. They instruct their teenage daughters Rezvan and Sana to be on their best behaviour and stay off social media.

Easier said than done for a couple of Gen-Z girls. When Rezvan's university friend Sadaf gets injured badly at a student protest against the regime, Rezvan shields her at her family’s apartment. This does not bode well for the image of a court investigator for harbouring a troublemaker and it makes Najmeh anxious.

At work, Iman is conflicted when he’s pressured to work on prosecutions he knows are bogus. He becomes aware that he's being used to interrogate the students who take part in protests and sign off on death sentences of the innocent. Knowing this, Najmeh doesn’t tell him about Sadaf’s involvement in anti-government activities. They could all get in trouble simply by association.

The family’s troubles deepen when Iman can’t find his handgun, which he’s hidden away at home. He suspects one of his daughters has taken it and questions the girls but finds nothing. Desperate and increasingly paranoid, Iman subjects his daughters to state-run psycho-analysis (gentle interrogation, if you will) as his distrust mounts.

By now the movie has morphed from a tight family drama into a thriller with an equally firm hand on pacing and momentum. Iman takes the family away to hide from media glare after his personal details are leaked and he’s recognised in public. In his dilapidated childhood home in the country, the family crisis descends into a deadly hide-and-seek in a nail-biting climax.

The Seed of The Sacred Fig is a layered study on loyalty -- to your family, your job, your country. It is a grim morality tale on turning a blind eye to injustice and the tension between looking after your own interests and showing kindness to those in need.

We also see how a man’s moral stance changes as his circumstances evolve. Iman starts off as an honest man who resists easy advancement by succumbing to corruption. The reality of life pressures him to become a monster who would inflict fear and even threaten death on his wife and daughters.

The demand of allegiance to an authoritarian government experienced by Iman and his unquestioning loyalty is contrasted with the anger and idealistic passion for change in his daughters. This is an astute political film that vividly captures a range of strong emotions from fear and confusion to hope and courage under a totalitarian rule. The family becomes a metaphor for the suppression inflicted by the patriarchy on its people, in particular women.

The backstory is just as intense and dramatic. Not only was The Seed of the Sacred Fig filmed in secret, the footage had to be smuggled out of the country after its director Mohammad Rasoulof was forced to flee his home country to avoid persecution. The filmmakers, including its cast and crew, all risk their lives for art, to tell stories about their country and the plight of its people. The story may be fictional, but truth is in every frame.

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