Film Notes

The Seed of the Sacred Fig: Mohammad Rasoulof’s domestic thriller is an elegant warning to the Iranian regime

A tense family unit serves as a microcosm of life under Iran’s authoritarian regime in this genre-inflected drama from exiled director Mohammad Rasoulof.

For many, the droll, often elliptical films of Jafar Panahi emerged as defining works about Iran under theocratic tyranny, but the latest from Panahi’s fellow survivor of persecution, Mohammad Rasoulof, shows the equal power of the starker drama in its story of division and complicity within the country’s privileged classes. Premiering dramatically in Cannes with Rasoulof freshly escaped from his country, The Seed of the Sacred Fig wrenchingly pits an investigating judge and his wife against their two dissenting daughters, who are appalled by brutal crackdowns on protesters.

The parents and teenagers essentially inhabit different worlds that only overlap in their Tehran apartment, the primary setting of the film’s first half. Iman (Misagh Zare), the respectable-looking father, is rising in the ranks of the state judicial department, doing increasingly repressive work that we never see; his wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), dotes upon him, and they savour the prospect of a bigger apartment and other rewards for his loyal service. But their daughters, university-age Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and younger Sana (Setareh Maleki), stay glued to social media videos of government attacks on protesters, shown repeatedly in harrowing clips in mobile phone-vertical shots.

Theirs is still a loving family, with warm memories; in one cosy scene, Mum and her girls groom and chat. But they’re primed for a generational clash, and the mounting dissonance between the young women’s democratic views and the parents’ hold-the-line conservatism becomes a microcosm of the archaic authoritarian regime ignoring its citizens’ will to be free. Rezvan and Sana are finally drawn directly into the turmoil of the latest protests when Rezvan’s friend, Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi), is wounded by a buckshot, and they smuggle her into the apartment for her safety.

In a simpler film, the attack on Sadaf would be the polemical centrepiece: she’s shown in lingering close-up, realistically gory with her eye swollen shut – the face of an innocent victim of violence that any supporter of the regime is condoning. But an equally strong moment comes when Rezvan confronts her father at the dinner table and says, baldly, he’s wrong, and too close to the problem to see it; at the film’s premiere screening, these exchanges sparked applause. “Normal people who want a normal life and freedom” is, in Rezvan’s words, at the root of the protests, not some conspiracy of ill-defined “enemies” that her father flimsily maintains. The teenage rebellion of the moment (which is not without humour) and Rostami’s reasonable tone and timing steer the scene clear of didactic showboating.

Accusations fly back and forth between the daughters and their protective mother, who’d rather that her children had never socialised with the likes of Sadaf but still asks a friend with a high-placed husband to ascertain Sadaf’s whereabouts in custody later. Throughout, Rasoulof is plumbing the individual moral decisions faced by citizens under this regime much as he did in There Is No Evil (2020) and its four stories circling capital punishment. But Sacred Fig proceeds to bust out of the confines of their domestic drama – which is surefootedly staged and fleshed out with telling gestures and glances – with eye-opening developments that express the paranoia engendered by the patriarchal regime and its corrosive effects. 

These genre-inflected turns include questioning of the girls by a friend of the family who works as an interrogator. It’s a creepy sequence that shows Rasoulof’s willingness to break out some severe imagery: Rezvan sits blindfolded against a bare wall, in an unsettlingly bare composition that gives the subjugation of citizen to state a pure, unforgiving shape. There follow some wildly unexpected action-drama flourishes (maybe foreshadowed by the movie’s mysterious opening, in which Iman drives through the night on a mission never fully explained, wielding a gun). Far from entertainment value, these sequences suggest the violent prerogatives Iman assumes as a father and controlling agent of the state when push comes to shove.

“Over there we will become the family we were,” Iman says at one point when explaining a move to the countryside where he grew up. The tortuous phrasing is a concise statement of conservative purpose: family and state returning to some imagined prior perfect form. It’s no wonder that Rasoulof opted to flee the country upon learning that authorities were onto his film production and would soon carry out his pending sentence of imprisonment and flogging. But his film deserves to be regarded on its own terms, as an eloquent record of and warning to a regime clinging to power at the expense of freedom.

Germany's Oscar Entry 2025 The Seed of Evil and Hope.

Cannes winner “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is shortlisted as Germany’s Oscar submission for Best International Film. The country could not have chosen a better film than the political parable by Iranian exile Mohammad Rasoulof.

In the midst of the political unrest in Tehran following the murder of Mahsa Amini, Judge Iman finds himself confronted with pressure from the regime. Having just been promoted to investigating judge at the revolutionary court, he remains loyal to the state while his daughters are gripped by the protests and his wife desperately tries to keep the family together. When his service gun disappears, he suspects his wife and daughters, starting an investigation in his own home in which all boundaries are crossed.

The intense psychological family drama opens with a quote that explains the political metaphor in the title: “The seeds, in bird droppings, fall on other trees. Roots spring up and grow down to the floor. Then, the branches wrap around the host tree and strangle it. Finally, the sacred fig stands on its own.”

The image of suffocation is reflected in the stifling web of lies, mistrust, and state control, as well as the breakdown of social bonds and human empathy. It is hard not to relate Rasoulof’s parable of repression and resistance to the dynamics of authoritarian systems—both past and present.

The Film Idea Came to Him in Prison

The idea for the thriller arose from an encounter in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where director Mohammad Rasoulof was being held. A guard “pulled me aside and said he wanted to hang himself […]. He suffered from an intense pang of conscience, but did not have the courage to free himself from the hatred for his job. Stories like these convince me that eventually, the women’s movement in Iran will succeed […]. Repressions may temporarily keep the situation under the government’s control, but eventually, like in many instances we’ve seen before, the government will surrender.”

The film's producer, Mani Tilgner, pointed out at the Arab Critics' Award acceptance ceremony that the film had struck a nerve:

Beyond being an outstanding work of storytelling, ensemble acting, and directing, The Seed of the Sacred Fig offers a subtle yet radical look at how individuals surrender to oppressive systems. Critics have called the film courageous, unnerving, and revelatory.

A German Oscar Entry Like No Other

Germany is not short on political Oscar submissions, from Schlöndorff’s winning anti-war film The Tin Drum to Stasi drama The Lives of Others to the four-Oscar success of trench drama All Quiet on the Western Front. Rasoulof’s film is the first to shift perspective and voice away from, and then reflect it back onto, German experiences—including artists’ being forced to leave their homeland: “I had to choose between prison and leaving Iran. With a heavy heart, I chose exile,” the Berlinale winner Rasoulof commented.

He himself has called his film’s Oscar nomination “complicated” and “bittersweet,” acknowledging “mixed feelings.” “I'm delighted Germany saw the international scope of the film and opened its arms. It's a sign to all filmmakers working under duress around the world,” Rasoulof said while touring in the USA after the Oscar submission.

Reacting more bluntly to criticism about an Iran-set Farsi film representing German cinema at the Oscars, Rasoulof counters:

While Iman’s family falls apart on screen, the cast was thrown together in solidarity through the crucible of persecution. Masolouf, who had lived in Germany before, is now in Hamburg, where his daughter lives. Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki, the actresses playing the daughters, are in Berlin.

Iran’s Oscar Entry as a Contrasting Programme

As a bizarre foil, Iran's official Oscar entry is called In The Arms Of The Tree, a drama the regime claims showcases “the beauty of this country” and portrays “the authenticity of the Iranian family.” The Seed of the Sacred Fig, an artistic monument to women fighting for their rights and freedom, would undoubtedly be a powerful, humanistic, and hopeful Oscar winner for any country.

Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe Institute. February 2025.

Jutta Brendemühl is Program Curator for the Goethe-Institut Toronto.