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Movie Reviews

Nathan Weinbender reviews "The Seed of the Sacred Fig"

Film still of Mahsa Rostami, Misagh Zareh and Setareh Maleki in The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024).
Film still of Mahsa Rostami, Misagh Zareh and Setareh Maleki in The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024).

NATHAN WEINBENDER:

The circumstances surrounding the making of the Iranian drama The Seed of the Sacred Fig are as tense and harrowing as the circumstances of its plot.

Writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof, knowing that the movie’s themes and his history of criticizing the government would ruffle feathers, filmed it in secret. As production wrapped, Rasoulof learned he was facing an eight-year prison sentence for the sentiments of his films. So he had the raw footage smuggled out of Iran and he fled across deserts and over mountain ranges, eventually finding exile in Europe.

It’s tempting to think that such an intense backstory is what got the film a jury prize at last year’s Cannes and an Oscar nomination for best international feature. But The Seed of the Sacred Fig is riveting, devastating and terrifying even if you don’t know the context of its making. This is a potent and unshakeable story of political unrest and its accompanying psychological torment, which causes families to turn on one another.

Iranian filmmakers are particularly good at distilling a big, roiling social issue and projecting its significance onto a single image or object—the pair of shoes in Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven, for instance, or the missing banknote in Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon. Here, it’s a handgun, issued to a man named Iman (Missagh Zareh) when he becomes an investigator for the Islamic Revolutionary Court.

Iman has been a lawyer for years, and his wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), believes his new position means they can now afford the lifestyle she feels she deserves. Their two daughters—Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami), who’s in her early 20s, and Sana (Setareh Maleki), a teenager—are unaware of the details of their father’s new job, which involves conducting brutal interrogations and fast-tracking death sentences.

Meanwhile, people their age are taking to the streets to protest the violence of the Iranian government. When one of their friends is injured by police during a protest, Rezvan and Sana begin to challenge their parents’ social standing. Their differences begin as ideological, but they grow into something much deeper and more personal.

And then Iman’s government issued handgun goes missing, which could result in him losing his job and doing prison time. On top of that, his address and identity, which were meant to be confidential, have been leaked online. Fearing for his safety, Iman whisks his family off to his boyhood home, far away in the desert. He’s convinced his wife or one of his daughters has taken the gun, and we begin to see the techniques of Iman’s job manifest in his private life. It’s no longer about the whereabouts of the gun. It’s about the erosion of trust within the family.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig builds to a third act of unbearable tension, and to a series of tragic ironies that mount with the cold efficiency and cruel logic of a fable. This is an intense family drama, a tempestuous political tract, and a blistering critique of life inside an authoritarian regime.

——

Nathan Weinbender is a co-host of Spokane Public Radio’s Movies 101, heard Friday evenings at 6:30 PM on KPBX and Saturday afternoons at 1:30 PM on KSFC.