Rent The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)

Watchable Iranian Film Nominated for an Oscar - The Seed of the Sacred Fig review by PV

This film is well made and watchable, the latest from this writer/director. It is political with a small 'p', using the metaphor of a divided family for the state of the nation of Iran, under Islamist dictatorship since 1979. Everything is riddled with suspicion, whispers and betrayal - as is usual in dictatorships or volatile states, same in Britain in 17th century.

The acting is great too. It is all intercut with real-life footage, much from smartphones, or street protests of recent years. The creeping suspicion does strangle the family and film like the sacred fig parasite plant, as described at the start of the film.

OK so the downsides - this film like many these days is too long, some flab could be sliced off here easily. The plot becomes in the third act a B-movie thriller which reminds me of old black-and-white films really. No spoilers. I suppose it had to end somehow...

Moreover, like many films, TV dramas and claims of certain actives, men are pitted against women here, the claim made that men oppress women and are responsible for such dictatorships and oppressing women. WHAT ROT! Those who know such cultures know it is the WOMEN who rule the home, not the men, so it is the older women in many Muslim/Asian households who force girls into headscarves and burkas, and enforced FGM and forced marriage. Not the men.

Indeed, how ironic that in the UK, the feminist lobby DEFENDS girls wearing hijab/niqab/burka, and even BBC has shows promoting these. Over in Iran, brave women and girls ripping OFF the headscarves/hijab is a sign of liberation. The UK has areas in cities where those females NOT wearing hijab will get targeted by patrols enforcing these rules - and we let that happen! Tolerance of intolerance happens a lot in the UK. Well done Iranian people for being so brave!

France has a group called Ni Putes Ni Soumises made up of Muslim women fighting extremist moralising Islam and things like forcing women and girls into headscarves, and face veils, and against domestic violence,. Sadly, the UK does not. That speaks volumes. The UK should be ashamed of this, the way here the burka/headscarf is imposed, with even newsreader here in hijabs and students at colleges/schools in burkas. Just wrong. BUT this garb is imposed by women in those Muslim homes, NOT men.

I am sure things will change in Iran soon, from within, maybe a more modern Gorbachev-style politician emerging from the present structures rather than ground-up protests, or maybe a bit of both.

This film deserved its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film (for Germany). A great watch, 4 stars

An insight into Iran's collective paranoia under Islamist rule - The Seed of the Sacred Fig review by Philip in Paradiso

The film takes place in modern-day Iran, under the rule of the repressive Islamist regime in power in Tehran since 1979. The story is centred on Iman, a devout Muslim and a lawyer, his wife, and their 2 daughters (one is a teenager, and the other one is in her early twenties). Iman has been appointed as an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. The position comes with a higher salary and the promise of a larger apartment in due course. The situation in the country is far from peaceful, however, as nationwide political protests are taking place, involving many young people who reject the regime's authoritarian and arbitrary rule. Iman finds that his role may be far more political than he perhaps expected. The story develops from there.

This is a good film, which re-creates the atmosphere within Iran very well. We can see and feel the impact that the regime's total control over society is having on every citizen, whether they support the regime or not. Iman, as a decent, honest man, is faced with a dilemma: think first and foremost of his career, or ask himself uncomfortable ethical questions. The film analyses what it means to be working for a repressive regime, and what such a regime does to its opponents but, also, to those who choose to serve it. The clash of generations in a deeply conservative and patriarchal society - pitting Iman against his daughters, with his wife caught in the middle - is depicted in a nuanced way, giving us a genuine insight into the way that Iranian society works. The interplay between the collective and the individual, between the regime and the population, is presented in an intelligent manner: the regime's paranoia becomes every person's own claustrophobic paranoia, like a disease nobody can escape from, eating away at the very fabric of society, relationships and families.

The main problem with the film is that it is very long (nearly 2 hours 45 minutes) and that it starts slowly, in a deliberative way. Still, a good movie I would recommend.

Bold state of the nation address in contemporary Iran - The Seed of the Sacred Fig review by PD

When this film was announced and selected for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the director was sentenced by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court to eight years in jail, flogging and a fine. Rasoulof skipped the country after sentencing and fled to a safe house in Germany. And all some filmmakers have to worry about is getting the final cut.

All the travails are worth it, though. Excellently played across the board, with powerful performances all the better for being understated, the film is a microcosm of contemporary Iranian life as filtered through a middle-class Tehran family, with a sprinkling of earned genre elements to boot. Rasoulof centres on Iman (Misagh Zare - thoroughly convincing), a civil servant who is promoted to an investigating judge tasked with interrogating those who protest against the regime. He is married to ultra-devoted wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani, also superb, who has been arrested in Iran over her activism) with two teenage daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami - really good) and Sana — neither of whom has yet been aware of what their dad does. This new position means changes: a better standard of living on the one hand, but restrictions on the daughters’ lifestyle on the other, together with a gun kept in a drawer for 'protection' which will significantly affect the plot.

For the first 80 minutes or so, it’s a slow-moving (at 2hrs and 45 minutes it might be overlong for some, but for me it didn't feel that way) but compelling domestic drama as Iman grapples with the new job — the speed with which he has to process the demonstrators denies due diligence, whilst the arrival of Rezvan’s free-spirited, militant friend Sadaf opens up fissures in the family which soon escalate. From this point, the film gets more melodramatic and thus loses its impact somewhat (even culminating in a rather implausible Hollywood-style shoot-out) but, for the most part, Rasoulof keeps it realistic, parlaying the political in human terms and never forgetting the true-life consequences: throughout the film, the fiction is punctuated with TikTok footage of horrifying police brutality (often meted out to women) and literal blood on the streets. There's little subtlety, and perhaps Rasoulof can be accused of being more interested in his own ideas than in what real young adult women might do in this situation, but the overall result is a bold and timely state-of-the-nation address.