Written and directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Dane-ye anjir-e ma’abed) has an extraordinary backstory. The first half of the film itself is powerful. The second half is disappointing.
The story centers on one family, husband and father Iman (Missagh Zareh), wife and mother Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), and their two daughters, university student Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and high school student Sana (Setareh Maleki).
Iman, a lawyer in Iran, has been promoted to a new job: investigating judge. At last, the family can move into a three-bedroom house and the daughters can finally each have their own room. Iman, for the first time, is issued a gun, which later in the plot becomes important. There is a problem with his new position. He has to sign death warrants for people who have done nothing to deserve it. Indeed, the man he is replacing was fired for refusing to sign similar death warrants.
Then the Woman, Life, Freedom movement breaks out. This is September 2022 when a young Iranian Kurdish woman, Jina Amini, was arrested by Iran’s morality police for wearing her hijab too loosely and died in custody. Large street protests ensue and students, in particular, defy the authorities. Rasoulof intersperses actual footage taken with cell phones with staged scenes. This footage shows the extreme brutality of the police and is the most effective part of the film.
Iman is put to work prosecuting the protestors, much to the disdain of his daughters, who are sympathetic to the movement. One of Rezvan’s friends, Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi), is shot in the face during the protests. Rezvan takes her home and tries to hide her. Najmeh has repeatedly warned her daughters not to get involved, but when confronted by Sadaf’s condition, she softens just a little and removes the buckshot from her face. Still, she hides her from Iman and sends Sadaf back into the dangerous world outside.
Meanwhile, Iman’s gun, stored at home, has vanished. If the authorities find out, he will be fired…or worse. It is fairly obvious that one of the daughters has stolen it, because Najmeh would never jeopardize her husband’s position, and there are zero other possibilities.
It is at this point that The Seed of the Sacred Fig falls apart. Until now, Iman has been an interesting character because he is confronted by an extreme moral dilemma. Now Rasoulof transforms him into The Villian. The three female members of the family eventually bond and become The Heroines. The rest of the film is a pretty standard good gals versus bad guy chase story. Too bad.
As for the backstory, those filmmakers who whine about their difficulties getting a film made should put it aside to hear what Rasoulof went through. Having already served time in prison a couple times for being an anti-government activist, Rasoulof learned from his lawyer that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court was about to sentence him to eight years in prison. His lawyer told him his appeal would take two months, after which government agents would, almost without a doubt, break into his house and take him away. Rasoulof and his crew worked night and day—in secret—to complete The Seed of the Sacred Fig. Then they escaped. For Rasoulof, this meant a harrowing 28-day journey to Germany, where post-production work on the film was underway. If you want to know more about Rasoulof’s escape, check out this article from The New York Times Magazine: Facing 8 Years in Prison, a Director Flees Iran.
