The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)
QFS No. 168 - The invitation for March 5, 2025
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) has been on my list since I saw a riveting trailer and have read a little bit about the film. Shot in secrecy in Tehran, this will be our second film from Iran, after the terrific A Separation (2011, QFS No. 49), directed by Asghar Farhadi. A Separation and his following one The Salesman (2016) both won the Academy Award for Best International Film, making Farhadi the only filmmaker from the Middle East to direct an Oscar-winning film in this category – and he did it twice.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig could’ve made Mohammad Rasoulof the second filmmaker to do so, but I’m Still Here (2024) took home the prize this year. Still, looking forward to seeing this our second selection from Iran (via Germany) - join the discussion!
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof
Reactions and Analyses:
The idea of Chekov’s gun – that if you see a gun at the beginning of the story you need to see it be fired later on – is what appears to be the initial setup of The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024). The very first shot are bullets being dropped onto the table and a gun handed to its new owner, Iman (Missagh Zareh). Moments later, it’s on the passenger seat as Iman drives away, the camera tilting down to reveal it, overtly drawing out attention to the weapon.
But for so much emphasis on the gun and the thriller-style opening of the film, the gun ends up being only a very small part of the film for the entire first half – so much so that it’s almost forgotten, the way Iman inadvertently forgets it in the bathroom until his wife Najmeh (the incredible Soheila Golsestani) discovers it one day. She’s already let him know that she’s not thrilled with having a gun around. But what we don’t yet realize is that this is all a long setup by filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof for a payoff later on. What we learn later is that the gun is more than a gun in this present-day Iran – it’s a symbol. It represents state power, and Iman will be a proxy for the people who wield that power.
To get there, the filmmaker focuses on the very real protests of 2022 unfolding in Iran with women standing up to the country’s misogynistic totalitarian regime, refusing to wear hijabs and standing up to the very real possibility of harm and death. In The Seed of the Sacred Fig set against this backdrop, Iman, an investigator trying to climb the ranks within the government, discovers in his new role that he’s supposed to rubber stamp death warrants without really looking into their veracity. He’s not thrilled about compromising his morals and is caught in a bind, and Najmeh talks him through his obligations. This, too, seems like a setup by the filmmakers about a man with a moral dilemma.
Their two young daughters, one a college student, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and the other Sana (Setareh Maleki), a teenager, are firmly in the crosshairs of the forces of change roiling their city and country Najmeh tells her children that they must dress modestly and avoid any hint that they are anything other than rule abiding because her father’s promotion depends on it – though they don’t know exactly what their father does. And besides, they’ll get government housing if he’s a judge and they’ll each have their own rooms.
But the forces of the world can’t be kept out because of social media. And here, the filmmakers are very inventive (perhaps too much?) with their use of real-life footage posted online at the time. The government was able to control their people in darkness, but with the light of videos and media, it’s a different story. Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi), Rezvan’s friend, is injured at a protest, shot in the face with buckshot. Secretly brought into their home, bleeding, Najmeh – despite very vocally opposing the protests and the women involved – patiently removes each pellet from Sadaf’s face. It’s a wrenching, horror-filled scene told in two close ups with the music rising, tight shots of bullets being removed cut with the mother’s stricken face, holding back tears. This is textbook in visualizing a character’s turning point – we see it in Najmeh’s face: this could’ve been her daughter.
She’s not all the way convinced the protests are good, but she knows that even innocent women – children – are caught in the crossfire. Later, the girls find out that Sadaf is taken away after she returned to college but nobody knows where she is. And Najmeh tries to get information covertly from Iman, without betraying that it’s someone they know for fear of getting him into trouble. She seeks out a family friend, Fatemeh (Shiva Ordooie) for information through Fatemeh’s husband who also works for a secret faction of the police.
And throughout all this, Najmeh’s concern remains mostly domestic. Her husband works too much and she pleads with him that her daughters need their father, especially now. He reveals that the arrests have escalated so much that he’s up all day rubber stamping guilty confessions.
Finally, the family is able to sit down and have dinner, but it leads to an inevitable explosive fight. The girls know what’s happening through social media, through the injury to Sadaf, that the people who might be injured are innocent and their lives are being destroyed just because they don’t want to wear the veil. Iman says they are misled by people with ill intentions, by women - whores, he believes - who want to walk around naked on the streets. The fight is vicious and ends with Najmeh firing back at the girls we finally had a dinner together and you ruined it.
All this time – the gun is not even remotely a part of the story. In fact, the entire QFS discussion group forgot its existence by and large except as an accessory carried by Iman. So when the gun disappeared, it truly was a surprise as much as it was a mystery. Iman can’t find it and Najmeh scramble to locate it. The children never even knew the gun was in the house, but they become Iman’s the primary suspects.
And it’s at this point the film kicks into overdrive and leaves the outside world’s tumult and brings it inside. Consumed by paranoia and fear of being imprisoned for his negligence, it’s a riveting next hour or so – in part because we really have no idea who could have taken the gun. Several of us believed he must’ve just lost it, which is set up nicely by the filmmakers as mentioned earlier when the overworked Iman accidentally left it with his clothes on the laundry hamper.
Instead of accepting that he could’ve possibly made a mistake, Iman assumes his family must’ve taken the gun. It’s unfathomable that someone in his position could do something in error, so he turns his ire and focus on the family. He makes Najmeh search the children’s room, turning everything inside out. She thoroughly searches the home and cannot find it. Iman begins to unravel and follows his colleague’s suggestion to have his children professionally interrogated by their mutual friend Alireza (anonymous actor). When you have your children professionally interrogated, you may have gone past the point of no return.
And in many ways, he has. The interrogator is certain it’s Rezvan, the college student. But she vehemently denies it. Further escalating Iman’s paranoia is that protestors have been finding people who work for the regime in secret and posting their names and addresses online – which is what happens to Iman. His colleague suggests he leaves with his family for a few days, is given a backup gun, and decides to go to his ancestral home. But before that, he drives home in a terrific sequence that showcases Iman’s paranoia. Everywhere he looks he thinks people are following or watching him. He looks over at a young woman driving next to him without a hijab and notices her small neck tattoo – is she one of these loose women, one of his enemies? A motorcycle seems to be driving a little too close – is that someone following him or is it just normal traffic? He gets home and sees someone on a cellphone outside their apartment building – is that someone keeping tabs on him, or is he waiting for a friend?
Iman is forced to experience life the way people without power live under the totalitarian regime of the country. The filmmaker has cleverly set this up throughout the film with echoes of Brazil (1985, QFS No. 158) or George Orwell’s dystopian 1984 as unavoidable comparisons. The state can turn on one of its own; no one is safe from the state’s mindless cruelty. And all of this seems like it’s going in that direction– a story about a man who is part of the system becomes a victim of that very system, leading him to question the system itself and his place within it, to perhaps renounce or even move to transform it.
That is not what Rasoulof does. Iman still convinced that one of his family took the gun and the final portion of the film devolves into a chaotic madman, unable to love his own family any more, becomes the cruel embodiment of the country’s leadership, still convinced that one of the three women in his life have stolen the gun. And in fact, one has! The one no one suspected, the younger daughter Sana. But Iman doesn’t know that yet, which makes for more suspense. After running two people who have recognized him off the road, the family arrives at the abandoned, dusty desert homestead of his youth where he locks the family in a room until they come out and reveal who has the gun. It escalates with Iman locking all of them in the room – except Sana who has escaped with the gun.
And there it has returned, Chekov’s gun, waiting to be fired. The final chase, though perhaps longer than it ought to be and slightly illogical, is still suspense filled and in a great location that evokes the longevity of Iran and Persia – something older than the mores of the current Iranian regime. Sana has the gun and Iman, who has another gun, chases her with the two others scrambling. I found myself wondering what is the desired outcome here? I don’t want Iman to be shot and killed, but I don’t want the women to suffer either. But what then? It makes for great drama that ends with Sana unable to shoot Iman except into the ground at his feet, where her father then collapses under the ancient sand walkway and is swallowed by the land itself.
Though Rezvan and Sana are Iman’s flesh and blood, he has become unable to see them as such in this final sequence, only concerned about his own ambition and safety. He seems prepared to kill his daughter Sana, even taunting her that she doesn’t know how to shoot. The filmmakers have chosen to have Iman embody the state – he is modern Iran’s government, unmoved and unwilling to bend.
It's a choice that feels like perhaps more symbolism than rooted in reality. Would a father actually do that? Would he forsake all of his memories, his love for his wife, seeing his children grow, all of their history together, because he’s been blinded by power and control? The filmmakers seem to say, yes, this is what totalitarianism does to ordinary people. Iman is the state and the state can only be eliminated, not changed – that’s what the director seems to be saying
Rasoulof can’t be faulted for any of these choices. After all, he’s been a victim of the regime for what appears to be his entire adult life. Much has been made about the fact that he filmed this movie entirely in secret over a 70-day period, and had to escape the country to arrive at the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere. So when we criticize the excessive chase sequence at the end or the imperfections in the conclusion of the film – aren’t the women now in even more danger and will be heavily questioned about the whereabouts of their dead husband/father? – all of this might have to be taken with a grain of salt (sand?).
What an extraordinary feat of pure will to make this film under circumstances we, living in the West, couldn’t possibly imagine. Sure there are a handful of plot holes, including how did Sana know there was a gun in the house and where it was and how did she hide it during the search, but as a group most of us found ourselves easily forgiving much of this given the larger scope of the film and the extreme lengths Rasoulof went to make it.
His filmmaking is incredibly savvy, using real footage shared on social media with even a nod to YouTube as a way to learn about all things, including how to load and fire a gun. This element of the old Iranian overlords unable to contain the new information-laden world is a fascinating additional angle to both The Seed of the Sacred Fig and the true protests that swept the nation in 2022 and beyond. For Rasoulof to pull all of this off in a contained thriller, a family social drama, and a commentary on society, the film is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking – both creatively and production-wise. While everyone might not agree on the story and ideas contained within the film itself, it’s hard not to take inspiration from the execution and commitment to telling a story like this against all the unimaginable odds to do so.
