It takes an inordinate amount of courage to be a film-maker in Iran, and Mohammad Rasoulof, now exiled director of this Cannes special jury prize-winning, Oscar-nominated political drama, ranks among the very bravest of the brave. Rasoulof, 52, has repeatedly been targeted by Iran’s Islamic revolutionary courts in the past. He received a one-year prison sentence for his 2017 picture, A Man of Integrity, about a goldfish farmer struggling to survive in the face of widespread corruption. In 2020 he was convicted of spreading anti-government propaganda for his scalding, Berlin Golden Bear-winning indictment of the death penalty, There Is No Evil, and sentenced to another year in jail. But for his latest film, which tackles the protests that erupted across Iran in 2022 after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini – arrested for failure to wear a hijab – the charge brought against Rasoulof was the more serious “collusion against national security”, the sentence eight years in jail, flogging, a fine and the confiscation of property. Rasoulof escaped Iran shortly before the film’s premiere in Cannes and is now living in Germany. The Seed of the Sacred Fig may not be his most elegant picture – it has pacing issues and a laboured final act – but it is without doubt Rasoulof’s most important film to date.
To tell stories through the medium of cinema in Iran, directors must navigate a complex system of stifling censorship laws, enforced by the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance. Not surprisingly, many creative people choose to sidestep the official channels altogether and opt for an underground approach, but that comes with its own considerable risks once the films are screened, usually outside Iran at international film festivals. Criticism of the state or of Islam is forbidden, but so are a host of other seemingly minor transgressions: characters drinking alcohol is a no-no; women can’t be seen to sing or dance; and for a female character to be shown on screen with hair uncovered is beyond the pale.
It was mainly this last, plus a bit of boozing, dancing and mild flirtation, that caused a problem for film-makers Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, who were placed under house arrest last year and prevented from travelling to Berlin for the world premiere of their gentle, relatively benign comedy My Favourite Cake. Veteran director Jafar Panahi, who made his most recent film, No Bears, while under house arrest, has had numerous run-ins with the Iranian authorities, most recently in 2022 when he petitioned the prosecutor’s office on Rasoulof’s behalf and was imprisoned as a result. But of the many Iranian film-makers whose work has been scrutinised by the regime, it is arguably Rasoulof who has taken the most overtly confrontational approach.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig makes its points emphatically. It uses the microcosm of a Tehrani family to explore the wider tensions in Iranian society. The father, Iman (Missagh Zareh), is a government employee who has recently been promoted to the role of “investigator”, a step towards his ultimate aim of being a judge in the Islamic court. Since his promotion coincides with a groundswell of protest, predominantly but not exclusively among young women, and a draconian police crackdown, Iman finds himself dealing with the cases of hundreds of arrested protesters each day. Some are sentenced to long prison terms; some receive the death penalty. It troubles him, but he comforts himself with the knowledge that he is upholding “God’s law”.
Meanwhile, his two teenage daughters, college student Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and schoolgirl Sana (Setareh Maleki), instinctively side with the protesters and spend hours glued to their phones watching, aghast, the unfolding scenes of violence and brutality (one of the film’s most potent and distressing devices is the use of actual phone-cam footage showing the horrendous beatings meted out to protesters). Torn between her duty to and love for her husband and her instinct to protect her girls is wife and mother Najmeh (Soheila Golestani, delivering satisfyingly textured work in the film’s most complex role).
Just as abuses of power lead to a breakdown of trust between the state and the people in the streets of Iran, so the same dynamic plays out within the family. When Iman’s government-issue gun goes missing, his list of suspects starts and ends with his immediate kin. And his techniques for extracting a confession are drawn from the state interrogation playbook. The mournful, melodic score by Karzan Mahmood takes on a harder, more metallic edge, evoking the sound of fists on prison bars. And while the overlong running time drags a little in the second half of the picture, the film’s final message – that tyranny and oppression should be buried and consigned to the past in order for the people to move forward – is an unequivocal challenge to the censors.
In UK and Irish cinemas
