“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” sprouted as a secret film.
Writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof escaped Iran after being sentenced to eight years of imprisonment and a flogging for protesting political injustices. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” was shot entirely in secret, and later debuted at Cannes.
The award-winning thriller “centers on a family thrust into the public eye when Iman (Misagh Zare) is appointed as an investigating judge in Tehran. As political unrest erupts in the streets, Iman realizes that his job is even more dangerous than expected, making him increasingly paranoid and distrustful, even of his own wife Najmeh and daughters Sana and Rezvan,” per the official synopsis.
Soheila Golestani, Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki, Niousha Akhshi, Reza Akhlaghi, Shiva Ordooei, and Amineh Arani star.
Rasoulof, who has been imprisoned numerous times for creating films that shine a light on the abusive government powers in Iran, told The Guardian that “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” was one of many scripts he created while in jail at the Evin Prison in Tehran.
“I wrote many projects when I was in prison, and I’ve always felt that if I go to prison for years, I won’t have the strength or the ability to make these films,” he said. “So first I have to make them, and then after, it’s always time to go back and to go to prison…My mission is to be able to convey the narratives of what is going on in Iran and the situation in which we are stuck as Iranians. This is something that I cannot do in prison.”
Rasoulof added of the Iranian government, “They’re just trying to scare everyone and to push everyone out of any attempt to make films or express themselves or use their freedom just because of this illusion of control,” he said. “And so my message to my peers, to other filmmakers, is: There are ways.”
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” went on to screen at TIFF and NYFF, but Rasoulof could not travel to be in attendance for either premiere.
IndieWire film editor Ryan Lattanzio wrote in the review that the feature is “an anguished cry from the heart” of Mohammad Rasoulof.
“While Iran will never, ever submit his deeply unsettling latest masterwork for the Best International Feature Oscar — often the only harbinger of anti-establishment Middle Eastern films making their way to the U.S. — this searing domestic thriller deserves the widest audience possible,” Lattanzio wrote. “With the brutal 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini by government hands as his launching point, Rasoulof crafts an extraordinarily gripping allegory about the corrupting costs of power and the suppression of women under a religious patriarchy that crushes the very people it claims to protect.”
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” premieres November 27 at the Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center in New York City and at the AMC Century City 15 in Los Angeles. Check out the trailer below.
