The gun of a high-ranking civil servant seems to have vanished in his home, as tensions heighten within his family (and outside in the streets of Tehran caused by the Mahsa Amini protests) in Rasoulof’s devastating but also galvanising work about the elusiveness of truth and the abuse of power.

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As brave a film as anyone can make in a country that doesn’t take too kindly towards filmmakers who don’t toe the party line, The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a triumph of filmmaking, so much so that writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof had to flee Iran to avoid imprisonment. 

As such, as a cinephile, you owe yourself to at least give this a go, despite the seemingly challenging runtime of nearly three hours. 

It’s worth it and earns its length despite being largely contained as a drama about a family of four (autocratic father, subservient mother and two semi-rebellious daughters) primed to implode from within. 

Likewise, Rasoulof, and many well-meaning Iranian citizens, men and especially women, harbour hopes of an implosion from within the theocracy as well, so that everyone can have freedom and a normal life. 

Set in the context of the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022, one of the most widespread revolts in modern Iranian history, Rasoulof includes real-life footage shot on mobile phones of the bloody carnage and remarkable courage of protestors. 

“They’re just normal people who want a normal life and freedom.”

These ‘grassroots montages’ remind me somewhat of a similar approach that Lou Ye used in his empathetic Covid pandemic meta-film An Unfinished Film (2024), highlighting the raw human immediacy inherent in its form, as well as the seamlessness in alternating between ‘real’ and ‘reel’ in both films’ storytelling. 

As such, Sacred Fig feels more than just a piece of realist fiction, although it gleefully ‘succumbs’ to thriller modes in its later parts. 

The father, a high-ranking civil servant who has the power to sign off execution orders (a moral quandary in the context of heightened extrajudicial sentences during this time), finds missing in his home the very gun assigned to him for his protection. 

A film about the lack of trust and the elusiveness of truth, as well as the abuse of power, Sacred Fig makes its intimate narrative underpinnings an explicit and thus potent allegory of what’s happening outside in the streets of Tehran. 

It is a devastating but also galvanising work with excellent performances all around, so much more focused than the director’s underwhelming Berlinale Golden Bear winner, There Is No Evil (2020).   

Grade: A-

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