THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (NYFF 2024) – Review by Diane Carson
The Seed of the Sacred Fig details Iranian oppression and violence
A repressive scenario unfolds in Iranian writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig through a microcosm of intolerance and violent retaliation. Anchored in his Teheran family, Iman earns a promotion to investigative judge in the Revolutionary Guard Court, an advancement welcomed by wife Najmeh. Meantime, their teenage daughters Rezvan and Sana become involved, through a schoolmate, in violent protests challenging repressive head coverings. Bureaucratic and interpersonal intimidation, demands for unquestioning compliance, paranoia, and sadistic retaliation all materialize as the metaphor of the sacred fig tree that strangles its host suggests a chilling comparison.
Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Scared Fig metaphorically addresses the Iranian crackdown on women who refuse to wear the hijab, but it casts its net wider, indicting those who cave to pressure, who lose all ethical behavior. Footage of actual political protests confirm the indictment of the overarching authoritarian regime as police violently retaliate against demonstrators. On a more personal level, Iman personifies the bureaucrat who will carry out the government’s inhumane dictates. Fear of retaliation against him pressures Iman as an investigator to sign death warrants, despite his reservations. In his official role, Iman is authorized to carry a gun for protection, and that gun will figure prominently in the devastation visited upon his family.
Rasoulof himself has endured three prison sentences and is forbidden to work in Iran where authorities have sentenced him to a prison term of eight years should he ever return. In his introduction at the Telluride Film Festival screening I attended and in press notes, Rasoulof explained “the idea of the film comes from my confrontations with the secret services and cultural entities that enforce censorship in Iran. All the characters in the film were inspired by real people.” For Iman, he says, “I tried to create an exemplary character who typifies the regime.” Focusing, as he further notes, on the psychological aspects, Rasoulof delves into the way “Iran can only stay in power through violence against its own people. In that sense, the gun in my story is a metaphor for power in a wider sense.”
I was so overwhelmed by this film that I attended the New York Film Festival screening to see it a second time. It proved equally powerful and memorable on a second viewing. Courageously, Rasoulof urges us, “Don’t be afraid of intimidation and censorship . . . They have no other weapon but terror.” Uncovering the tactics that sustain that world, Rasoulof presents an absorbing microcosm of repression and intolerance and the toll it takes personally and publicly. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is in Farsi with English subtitles.
