Sacred Strangling Seed

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is the most recent film by Mohammad Rasoulof, whose previous work There is No Evil (2020) earned him several prison sentences. After his last film, the Iranian regime sentenced him to eight years in prison, flogging and the confiscation of his property. Rasoulof subsequently fled his country on foot. Not everyone on the film crew managed to escape. Their fate remains uncertain.

Unfortunately, these facts are yet another example of stifled freedoms in a totalitarian system. Films addressing oppression or exploitation can be watched in any season, painfully, dutifully. You’re often left with a feeling of sadness afterwards, bitter helplessness, often frustration. You wonder why you’re feeling guilty, because there’s nothing you can do. What these films lead to is only shame at one’s own privilege.

This film is different. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is like a classic thriller that gets the heart rate up, makes your palms sweaty, and sharpens your hearing. In this film, nothing is dreamy, there are no moments of slackness, and aesthetics always serve the plot. It’s an almost old-fashioned film where the utmost care has been given to every detail. The mastery that becomes visible remains true to the genre of psychological thriller, and yet the aforementioned physical reactions don’t only come from effects. This film is successful neither just as a genre film nor just as an indictment. A family drama in a city flat in a totalitarian system unfolds, revealing the countless windings, wrinkles and creases of a paradoxical reality. It’s common that an abyssal contradiction exists around the kitchen table. At the same time, outside on the street, an indestructible resistance movement is formed, penetrating through every crack. In this film, reality is drawn into fiction, both as an artistic choice and a political statement.

The film crew had to work with many restrictions because the film was made clandestinely. Most scenes were filmed in the same interiors, which were decorated over and over again to serve as different spaces. For scenes in public spaces, permission was requested for a short film with a different story. When the police would come, the crew could quickly pretend they were working on the cover film. Even at an early stage, during casting, actors were first presented with a script that followed censorship regulations. When an actor opened up, more details of the actual script were shared step by step.1 This is how this film was shot in secret and in many deceptive ways.

The production process of The Seed of the Sacred Fig reflects the themes of the film itself. The clandestine is always veiled by the permissible. The compulsory wearing of the headscarf is a symbol of the chameleonic attitude imposed on everyone. The legally required covering of women’s heads serves as a reminder that one should never show oneself undisguised.

The film begins the moment Iman, an ambitious lawyer, is appointed as investigating judge. His wife Najmeh gleams with pride as she strokes his eyebrows and his beard. She is also a devoted mother: her husband’s promotion will improve the futures of her daughters, Rezvan and Sana. She dreams of her children no longer having to share their bedroom once they’re able to afford a bigger flat. Privacy seems like comfort, but gradually we learn how the sisters’ private space is a control room where they’re watched, out of love for them, and their behaviour is constantly checked against the values of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Iman was given a gun by his superior to protect his family. In the marital bedroom, he puts it in Najmeh’s hands so she can feel it. The weight of a gun is so much more than the weight of metal. The actress Soheila Golestani’s face betrays many conflicting thoughts. Her look foreshadows how their relationship will be tested by Iman’s promotion. From now on, a form of violence borders their eroticism. Love and control, protection and destruction are slowly superimposed. This film shows the subtlety of a system of thought that finds its basis in the intimate space of the nuclear family. The gun is put away again in the bedside table.

With their father now deciding between right and wrong, the daughters will have to behave in an exemplary manner. But as they put on their headscarves to go outside, slogans like ‘Women, Life, Freedom!’ intrude. After the death of Masha Amini, who died at the hands of the police on 16 September 2022 after improperly following the dress code, students, women and men took to the streets. The film incorporates these real events and shakes the foundations of both the characters’ lives and its own fictional space. Rezvan and Sana rush to the window, peeking only briefly between the curtains. They shouldn’t be seen, even as onlookers. But in their bedroom, they incessantly watch videos of the protests on their phones. On screen, we also get to see the shocking images of protesters taking to the streets en masse and being attacked by police, shot at or forcibly pulled into a black van. The images of reality penetrate the space of fiction but don’t damage it. There are activist as well as dramaturgical reasons for showing this police brutality. Remarkably, this doesn’t cause the film to drift away but instead gives it a sharper focus. The family drama is directly related to current events, as is probably always the case.

In the bedroom, Iman and Najmeh sit on the edge of their bed again. On his first day of work, their father is presented with a death sentence, which he’s expected to sign. He shares the dilemma with his wife, who speaks encouragingly to him. The first signature is always the most difficult. The more he signs, the easier it will be.

There are whispers in the rooms of an investigating judge. The domesticity of a married couple lit by a red nightlight and two sisters looking at their phones together is chilling and at the same time familiar, entirely imaginable in another context, in another place, or here – maybe not yet, but soon.

In the living room, the television shows comforting talk shows; in the kitchen, delicious dishes are prepared. Increasingly scarce, however, are the moments when Iman dines with his family. He’s buried under work because of the protests. He seems to feel safer in the tribunal than at home. The looks from his daughters take away his appetite.

Rasoulof described how he got the idea for this film in an interview.2 For five weeks, while the court tried to solidify their case against him, he was placed in solitary confinement. He was then transferred to another prison, where he was locked up with a friend, a political prisoner who was on a hunger strike at the time. A senior prison official visited that prisoner together with some colleagues. During this visit, a prison official discreetly approached Rasoulof and gave him a pen. He said, “This is a gift for you.” The prison employee whispered that every time he passed through the overpass of the prison with his car, he wondered when he would hang himself on it. He was under a lot of pressure from his family. His children were asking him time and again why he works for this system. After this confession, Rasoulof became convinced that he wanted to make a film about a family within which tensions arise between generations. “Something that’s common in Iranian society today,” he said.

Of course, it’s impossible for a European viewer to estimate the inestimable value of a pen, just like the significance of all those other objects and gestures that have great significance within Iranian society. The Seed of the Sacred Fig shows a stifling reality that’s claustrophobic, like a prison whose walls are invisible. Within it, the characters move, ever more strongly in relation to the filmed images of the demonstrations.

One day, Iman opens his bedside table – it’s empty. The gun is gone, as well as his certainties and self-confidence. In his car on his way to the tribunal, he transports this emptiness. In traffic, to his horror, Iman sees a woman in the car next to him at the wheel, wearing make-up and without a headscarf, looking at him defiantly. There is nothing he can do. The two cars seem separated by an abyss. The interior of a car is almost the only “outside space” that appears in the film. It’s a mobile private space, offering protection and making ordinances fluid. Behind the tinted windows, people speak freely. It’s perhaps for this reason that videos show riot police purposefully smashing car windows. These mobile bubbles of freedom need to be punctured.

The abstraction Iman previously made of the people he condemned is lifted by his fear. He chooses more and more firmly for prosecution as the influx of protesters in the prisons can no longer be kept up with and his service weapon remains untraceable. The image of Najmeh weighing his gun in her hands, the awe in her gaze, remains in his mind as he proceeds to look for the thief. He suspects only his own daughters and his own wife. Of course, it all has to do with masculinity. Behind the curtains, feminist slogans can be heard. Yet men stand side by side with women waving their headscarves around above their heads. The demand for women’s freedom is heard all over the streets, which is not a women’s issue but stands for the freedom of all.

Although more and more protesters are arrested, the protests continue. Iman feels overcome with suspicion and tries to shield himself and his family from the unrest by retreating to their country home. “Our family will return to how it once was,” he says. As they leave their residence, the film also moves away from its initial genre. The psychological thriller is left behind in the city. The vast mountains and endless rocky plains their car traverses announce a transition of the film’s style. Realism is gradually abandoned and we find ourselves in a much more symbolic space. In the same colour of the landscape, an ancient settlement looms, fallen into ruins. History, tradition and ancient dogmas seem to be materialised here. The family drama takes on horror elements.

During a spectacular – and rather bombastic – final scene, the patriarch’s power crumbles and his female family members take over. Heavy symbolism petrifies into a hand sticking out of the sand. The ruins of the past have given way. Large yellow dust clouds announce a new wind. Another breath of fresh air is that this filmmaker chooses big gestures with complete conviction, because he deems them necessary. Chases, tricks and surprises link the legendary story to concrete political reality, which finds resonance in cinema. As an artist, the director sees his responsibility and recognises that cinema is part of reality. This is a distinctly activist film that ends with hope, almost becoming a manual for the future. A revolution is set in motion.

The “Women, Life, Freedom” protests have been going on for three years now, but they’re still not extinguished. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is not playing in Iranian cinemas but will undoubtedly find its way to Iranian audiences through peer-to-peer networks. In the opening sequence, the title is provided with an explanation: “Ficus Religiosa is a tree with an unusual life cycle. Its seeds, contained in bird droppings, fall on other trees. Aerial roots spring up and grow down to the floor. Then, the branches wrap around the host tree and strangle it. Finally, the sacred fig stands on its own.” This film is a seed.

• 1Daniel Schindel, “How Director Mohammad Rasoulof Made One of the Year’s Defining Films in Secret,” Interview Magazine, 3 December 2024.
• 2American Film Institute, “A Conversation with The Seed of the Sacred Fig’s Mohammad Rasoulof & Setareh Maleki,” uploaded March 2, 2025, YouTube video.