David R. Walker

Archive for July 25th, 2024

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Director: Mohammad Rasoulof

Cast: Mahsa Roshani, Setareh Maleki, Niousha Akhshi, Missagh Zareh, Soheila Golestrani

Running Time: 2 hours and 48 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Film Festival: Durban International Film Festival – DIFF 

Language: Persian with English subtitles

After a tumultuous start to the premiere of Iranian director’s new film The Seed of the Sacred Fig which eventually did premiere in competition at the 2024 Cannes festival, the lucky director Mohammad Rasoulof managed to escape his sentence in Iran of 8 years in prison, a whipping and a fine and move to Germany in May 2024 just in time for his superb yet complex film to premiere at Cannes Film Festival in France.

Fresh from its controversial premiere, The Seed of the Sacred Fig had its African premiere at the 45^th Durban International Film Festival and is a fascinating yet complex, slightly drawn out family drama which moves from the confines of a luxury apartment in central Tehran to an outlying area of Iran: a remote house in the countryside.

Much like director Justine Triet’s Oscar winning courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, which rightly won best original screenplay at the 2024 Oscars, The Seed of the Sacred Fig which was also written and directed by Mohammad Rasoulof is a simple story about a family of four: a father, a mother and two daughters.

One day the father who has been promoted as an investigator whose job description is shady at best, comes home one day and brings a gun to the apartment. He shows it to his wife. Then the gun goes missing.

Ironically, before this incident, the father tells his family that their actions should be viewed by the rest of Iranian society as irreproachable. After all he is an investigating judge for the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran.

While the investigator Iman played by Missagh Zareh is often absent, his wife Rezvan played brilliantly by Mahsa Rostami has to contend with their two young daughters Sana and Sadaf as they start rebelling against the current government and as protests flare up in central Tehran many horrific videos are shared on social media and soon the eldest Sadaf assists one of her college friends who gets badly beaten.

The women have no rights in this film and interestingly when Iman’s gun goes missing which could threaten his job in the pernicious administration, his work colleague suggests that he interrogates his wife and two daughters.

From domestic harmony, where the social unrest and strife is always viewed through partly closed windows as the night sky in Tehran is lit up with fires and the sounds of civil unrest, that external social strife soon becomes internalized in this family when Iman takes his wife and daughters to a remote location to question them, the only time that a seemingly normal family event occurs which rapidly deteriorates into a cat and mouse game between captor and hostage.

As Iman’s true occupation as a judge and executioner gets revealed, director Mohammad Rasoulof expertly directs the action by incorporating real footage from social media of recent civil unrest in Tehran, while commenting on the many contradictions in Iranian society as it struggles to maintain traditions and religious custom while digital advancement gradually undermines the social fabric.

Ominous in tone, but hugely fascinating as a piece of cinema which offers an unfiltered glimpse into a reclusive society which is completely at odds with the West, The Seed of the Sacred Fig gets a solid rating of 8 out of 10.

The only criticism is that some of the domestic scenes could have been edited, otherwise this complex family film is recommended viewing as a fine example of International cinema.