‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ review: Mohammed Rasoulof’s study of suffocation is a masterpiece

The best art often blooms from the darkest soil, and with that sacred fig seed, Mohammad Rasulof has written his anti-government treatise deep and firm. Filmed in secret, smuggled across borders and screened in Cannes against the apparent wishes of the oppressive constraints of Iran’s theocracy, the filmmaker’s latest work seems to live up to its name as a complex, thorny creature that Strengthens its grip as it grows. The film itself defies classification – partly domestic drama, partly political dissection, and even a horror film at times. But above all, it is a serious indictment of the machinery designed to crush the defiant spirit of Iranian women.

Explosives set off in Tehran during woman, life, freedom Set in 2022 during protests against the custodial killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, the story follows Iman (Missagh Zareh), a newly appointed judge at Iran’s Revolutionary Court. On paper, it’s a promotion – better pay, a bigger apartment, and a shiny new (Chekovian) gun for “protection.” In fact, it is an opening into the state machinery, where the death penalty is handed out like a parking ticket and dissent is quashed without debate. But much more than a puppet of the regime exercising its power with a sense of self-righteous piety; Iman is also a father and husband, who is slowly drifting apart.
sacred fig seed (Persian)
Director: Mohammad Rasulof
Mould: Soheila Golestani, Misagh Zareh, Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki
Runtime: 168 minutes
Story: Distraught by the unrest in Tehran, Judge Iman loses his gun. Suspicious of the family, he imposes harsh rules, causing relationships to become strained as society becomes unstable.
His wife, Najmeh (Sohila Golestani), is dutifully submissive, while his daughters, Rezwan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki), fight against the harsh limits imposed by their father and, by extension, the state. The script presents these familial tensions with both specificity and universality, portraying them with a deliberate accuracy that mirrors the larger tensions outside the walls of their apartment: silence, surveillance, and the slow erosion of autonomy.
When the aforementioned state-issued gun goes missing, Iman’s world begins to crack. She’s sure someone in her family has taken it — after all, her teenage daughters are glued to Instagram protest videos making rebellious noises about the hijab. Najmeh warns her that the girls are being “too adventurous”, but Iman is confident that her authority as a patriarch will keep them under control. Once the gun goes missing, his confidence begins to erode.

A scene from ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ Photo Credit: Neon
What follows is chaos, though Rasulof is in no hurry to take the fall. The family’s small, claustrophobic apartment becomes a tense pressure cooker as Iman’s paranoia infects everyone and everything. He resorts to interrogating his own family with the same cold detachment he reserves for the dissidents passing through his courtroom. Blindfolded, they avoid demanding the truth, not as their father but as their judge.
In one of the film’s most harrowing moments, Najmeh removes a buckshot from the face of Sadaf, a young protester hiding in her home who was brutally attacked by police. The scene is painfully detailed, the camera panning across her bloodied face while Nejmeh works silently. It’s her first small act of rebellion, it’s a kindness, but it feels monumental. And yet, this compassion neither romanticizes him nor turns him into a hero, nor does it change the system or stop the violence. It just is – a delicate, fleeting moment of (profane) humanity. Later, when the veil of lies is lifted and Najmeh finally breaks, her soft, gentle rebellion is seismic.
Pooyan Aghbabai’s cinematography is gentle but dangerously effective. The dim corners of apartments and the dirty, sinister corridors of courtrooms are captured in suffocating closeness to its characters and their crumbling world. Meanwhile, the use of shocking actual protest footage highlights the roaring challenge of a faceless crowd against the stifling outbursts of this nuclear family’s personal rebellion.

A scene from ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ Photo Credit: Neon
It’s tempting to read the film as a direct reflection of Rasuloff’s own struggles. Iranian filmmakers, who have spent much of the last decade avoiding prison sentences and government sanctions, know better than others what it means to live under constant surveillance. Still, there is a certain irony in Rasuloff’s approach. While contemporaries like Jafar Panahi often turn the camera on themselves to craft meta-narratives that obscure their art and activism, Rasoulof chooses to focus on the very people who have made their lives hell. Iman’s rigid adherence to rules and his blind faith in the system is the very expression of the regime – a man whose soul has been so thoroughly strangled by the sacred fig that he no longer realizes that he is complicit in his own destruction.
Of course, the metaphor is absolutely subtle. The titular parasitic tree that strangles its host from within is a blunt but effective metaphor for Iran’s theocracy. Like a tree, the regime wraps itself around its people, squeezing the life out of them under the guise of security. Rasuloff’s direction is similarly blunt, unapologetically fiery, and, at times, teetering on the edge of melodrama, but when the reality is so brutal, the subtlety seems almost dishonest.
By the time the film draws its broken family into the final act, what’s left is a hollow microcosm of a nation in free fall. And when the screen goes black, don’t expect good resolution or a comfortable view. When the fight is still raging, Rasulof knows better than to offer catharsis. The sacred fig may strangle the life out of its host, but it cannot kill what lies beneath – the roots that resist, grow and push back. And the exiled thorn in the side of Iran’s theocracy understands this all too well.
It’s almost ridiculous, if it weren’t so infuriating, that such an urgent and important film was relegated to a “special” award at Cannes, while its competitors have a chance to win Best Picture at the Oscars soon. . Few films are so deeply tied to the repressive soil from which they were created, and yet here was Rasuloff’s masterpiece born of suffocation given an honorable mention.

What does it mean to protest against a system designed to crush you? What happens when those who enforce that system start overpowering themselves? And, most importantly, how long can such a system survive before its roots finally collapse? Rasuloff doesn’t have the answers, but he doesn’t need to. He has already sown the seeds.
Seed of the Sacred Fig is currently playing in theaters.
published – January 27, 2025 04:56 PM IST
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