Film Forum

Dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, a longtime critic of the regime (THERE IS NO EVIL, MANUSCRIPTS DON’T BURN), shot his latest, THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (Special Jury Prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival) clandestinely — fleeing the country after receiving an 8-year prison sentence. His new film is a tense familial drama: when Iman is promoted to investigating judge on Tehran’s high court, he and his wife, Najmeh, are excited for their elevated social status. But when his government-issued gun goes missing while his daughters Resvan and Sana are glued to their phones, expressing support for women-led student protests, Iman grows increasingly paranoid and mistrusting of his own loved ones. Not only a lacerating critique of a patriarchal regime crumbling from within, but “a thriller of propulsive skill and blunt emotional force, marrying the muscularity of an action film to the psychological intensity of a chamber drama.” —Justin Chang, The New Yorker

2024     166 MIN.     IRAN / GERMANY / FRANCE     NEON
IN PERSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Reviews

“About everyday Iranians, particularly women, coming to realize that a monster—or, at least, a functionary of a monstrous entity—is in the house with them. With calm insistence, Rasoulof depicts the shaking awake of perhaps whole swaths of Iranians who have found themselves no longer able to abide or ignore the injustices occurring on their doorsteps… A mighty tribute to the filmmaker’s many countrywomen who continue to risk it all in the fight for their lives.”
– Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

“A brazen and startling picture which…does justice to the extraordinary and scarcely believable drama of his own situation and the agony of his homeland. It’s a movie about Iranian officialdom’s misogyny and theocracy, and sets out to intuit and externalise the inner anguish and psychodrama of its dissenting citizens… [It] begins as a downbeat political and domestic drama in the familiar style of Iranian cinema, and then progressively escalates to something extravagantly crazy and traumatised — like a pueblo shootout by Sergio Leone.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“MASTERFUL. A livid, thinking-person’s thriller…Within this family, we can see the same tensions playing out that have galvanized so many in Iran as a whole…[A] gripping and all-around more suspenseful look at the extremes to which the older generation will go to maintain its control.”
– Peter Debruge, Variety

“That THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG starts off like the kind of subtle, intricately made chamber piece that Iranian cinema has been known for, whether in films like CLOSE-UP or A SEPARATION, only to veer toward the horrific (and, at the very end, toward something closer to a western), is thus only natural. Given that he’s one of the leading chroniclers of his country’s dire state, and one whose own life and security hang in the balance with each new movie, it’s hard right now to imagine Rasoulof making anything else.”
– Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter