The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) premiered at Cannes this May after its director, Mohammad Rasoulof, was sentenced in Iran to eight years in prison. Rasoulof successfully fled from Iran to Germany, and just days later was miraculously able to walk the red carpet at Cannes. Meanwhile, two of the film’s lead actors, Soheila Golestani and Missagh Zareh, are still in Iran, unable to leave.
Why did a single film attract so much attention from the Iranian government? The Iranian government’s crackdown on filmmakers is nothing new—Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film released in 2011 is a good companion film for the events surrounding the release of The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig is set in 2022, eleven years after This is Not a Film was released. The film follows a family in Tehran: Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami), a college student who lives at home; Sana (Setareh Maleki), her adolescent sister; Namjeh (Soheila Golestani), their stay-at-home mother; Iman (Missagh Zareh), their father. Iman has just been promoted to be an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court of Tehran. However, this position, which involves signing off on death sentences for people deemed criminal, puts him in harm’s way, and the government fears retaliation from the families of people sentenced. For his protection, he is given a gun.
Meanwhile, Rezvan and Sana watch the beginnings of the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests from their phones, despite their parents’ warnings to stay off of social media. Mahsa Amini was a woman who was arrested for allegedly not wearing the hijab in accordance with government standards. According to police, she had a heart attack in the police station. According to eyewitnesses (and reflecting images of her in the hospital), however, she was severely beaten and died as a result of police brutality. Word of her death on September 16, 2022, spread through social media, resulting in mass protests.
Most of the film takes place in the family’s apartment, as fear of the protests forces the women of the family to stay indoors. The film’s indoor setting was partially out of necessity: it was made in secret to prevent censorship, even though those involved in its production were aware of the consequences that might come upon the film’s release. Rasoulof uses this to his advantage, though, capturing the claustrophobia the three women experience. They dare not join the anti-hijab protests outside, but inside their own home, they are bare-headed.
When Iman seems to misplace his gun inside the home, the film makes a shift in genre to mystery. Mother and father frantically search their two-bedroom apartment. Iman is threatened with three years in prison if he cannot locate the gun and subsequently grows suspicious of the women in the household. He ultimately takes the family to his home village, where he grows increasingly paranoid that one of them has deceived him. The film devolves into a domestic thriller, almost like The Shining.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a protest against the Iranian government, centered around a bourgeois and pro-status quo family. Najmeh is fervently religious and believes everything she watches on state TV; the girls, meanwhile, never protest the mandated hijab. The girls only protest their father’s job when it threatens their lifestyle.
The family remains in line until Iman’s gun is lost. Only when his violence, usually limited to enemies of the government, becomes directed at his family, does a division arise between Iman and the rest of his family. Even this family—seemingly untouchable compared to the women who face violence in the streets—can experience the violence of misogyny and the state.
