[Review of "The Seed of the Sacred Fig"] We are witnessing a film that was made at the risk of one's life
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) follows Iman, a state official pressured to fabricate charges against protesters. Using Chekhov’s Gun, the film symbolizes oppression and violence, blending actual protest footage with fiction. Director Mohammad Rasoulof risked his life to make it, earning international recognition and the Special Jury Prize at Cannes.
1)
One of the dramaturgical techniques of the playwright Anton Chekhov is called <Chekhov's Gun>. It is known as a kind of rule of literary technique that "elements shown in the introduction of a story must have their meaning and importance made clear later in the story".
2)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024), set in Iran as anti-government protests are heating up, opens with a video of a hand retrieving eight bullets that have been rolled on a desk.
The bullets are for Iman (Mishak Zahra), a state official, to load into a handgun issued to him for self-defence.
3)
He is promoted to investigator because of his patriotism but is forced to follow the state's instructions to fabricate charges against arrested anti-government demonstrators.
When he bears the brunt of the public's anger at unjust punishment, he must defend himself. The fact that the opening shot of this film is a bullet foreshadows Iman's gun becoming a critical motif.
4)
Another important motif is the hijab, a scarf-like cloth that Muslim women in Iran must wear to cover their hair in public places.
5)
The film cleverly incorporates the historical fact that protest demonstrations broke out across Iran in response to an incident in 2022 in which a Kurdish woman was allegedly killed by police violence.
The whole story of women who took part in the demonstration without wearing a hijab being unjustly arrested was spread on social media.
6)
The film quotes vertical footage shot on a smartphone and posted and shared. The montage of the actual footage blurs the line between reality and fiction while condemning the crimes. This film also features a harsh perspective.
7)
In addition, the opening shot of a car driving through the gap between two walls and the scene where Iman spills food on his shirt after his boss scolds him for tarnishing his name by asking, "Are you trying to take away my position?" suggests that the film constructs metaphors for Iman's inner thoughts through the visual direction.
8)
Originally a liberal, Iman betrays her conscience, and the pressure of being the target of public anger and the suspicion created by government surveillance and wiretapping leads to conflict with her daughters, who are sympathetic to the protest movement.
9)
In the process, the gun issued to him for self-defence reappears just when he has forgotten about it. As if to emulate <Chekhov's Gun>, there is an incident in the middle of the film where the gun is lost.
10)
Director Mohammad Rasoulof was sentenced for criticising the Iranian government and fled his country to submit his film The Sacred Fig Seed.
The film won the Special Jury Prize at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards, and received much international acclaim.
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG
https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/the-seed-of-the-sacred-fig/
The 77th Cannes Film Festival winners' list
published on 05/25/2024
Special Prize 2024
Réalisé par : Mohammad RASOULOF
Année de production : 2024
Pays: Germany, France, Iran
Durée: 168 minutes
11)
On the other hand, his previous film, There Is No Evil (2020), won the Golden Bear at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival. Still, he could not attend the festival because of the Iranian government and him from travelling abroad. So what we have here is a film made at the risk of his life.
12)
The gun in this film seems to be a trigger for violence. Just like the government, which intimidates the masses with the fear of violence, Iman, who is supposed to be a liberal, ends up picking up a gun and trying to subjugate her family through violence, which is something that cannot happen to anyone else.
[Review of "The Seed of the Sacred Fig"] We are witnessing a film that was made at the risk of one's life
https://eiga.com/news/20250216/8/
Film: The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) - IMDb 7.6/10
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32178949/
The Seed of the Sacred Fig - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seed_of_the_Sacred_Fig
Cannes Special Jury Prize winner "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" is to be released on February 14, 2025!
https://fansvoice.jp/2024/11/29/sacred-fig-release/
"If there is no way, we must make one" - Mohammad Rasoulof's message to the world in "The seed of the sacred fig."
https://moviewalker.jp/news/article/1230160/
An interview with director Mohammad Rasoulof for the film "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" Part 1 | About the actors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0DBs_jXwlo
Interview with Director Mohammad Rasoulof of the film "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" Part 2 | About leaving the country
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH8F_Si7Wxg
"The Seed of the Sacred Fig" Director Mohammad Rasoulof Interview Part 3 | About the filming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fp-rY_MPt8
Tomohiro Machiyama Film: The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) and "TATAMI (2024)" 2025.02.11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y_qt9DoYIg
I watched "The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P21SzDecP3c
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) English film ‧ Crime/Drama | Soheila Golestani | Review and Facts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WnPfmA4Fs8
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Film: The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)
https://eiga.com/movie/101711/
Comment:
A)
It is a suspenseful thriller about a family's growing suspicions over a missing gun: it won the Special Jury Prize at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. It was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.
B)
Director Mohammad Rasoulof, who has won international acclaim for films such as "There Is No Evil" but has been convicted several times in his native Iran for criticising the government in his movies, uses actual footage in this film set against the backdrop of the protest movement that erupted in 2022 after the suspicious death of a woman.
C)
Iman, who lives in Tehran with his wife and two daughters, is recognised for his 20 years of hard work and patriotism and is promoted to his long-awaited position as an investigating judge. However, the content of his job is to work for the state to punish those arrested for anti-government demonstrations unfairly.
D)
Because of the risk of reprisals, the government issues a gun for self-defence to protect the family, but one day, the gun disappears from the house. At first, it is thought to have been lost through Iman's carelessness, but suspicion gradually falls on his wife Najmeh, eldest daughter Rezwan and second daughter Sana.
E)
As the search progresses, the aces of each member emerge that even the family did not know, and the situation takes an unexpected turn.
F)
2024 production / 167 minutes / Germany, France, Iran co-production
Original title: The Seed of the Holy Fig
Theatrical Release Date: 14th February 2025
Oscars nominations 2025: the full list
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jan/23/oscars-nominations-2025-the-full-list
https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2025
"Exhausting and extremely dangerous": Mohammad Rasoulof on his escape from Iran
This article is more than 9 months old
Exclusive: The director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig details how he discarded electronic devices and fled over the mountains on foot after authorities sentenced him to eight years in prison and flogging
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The Seed of the Sacred Fig review – Mohammad Rasoulof’s arresting tale of violence and paranoia in Iran
The exiled director’s story of officialdom’s misogyny and theocracy in his home country may be flawed, but its importance is beyond doubt
A)
Mohammad Rasoulof is a fugitive Iranian director and dissident wanted by the police in his own country, where he has received a long prison sentence and flogging. Now he has made a brazen and startling picture which, though flawed, 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 – in a country where women can be judicially bullied and beaten for refusing to wear the hijab. The Seed of the Sacred Fig 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.
Iman (Missagh Zareh) is an ambitious lawyer who has just been promoted to state investigator – one step short of being a full judge in the revolutionary court. He gets a handsome pay rise and better accommodation for his family: wife (played by actor and anti-hijab protester Soheila Golestani) and two student-age daughters (Setareh Maleki and Mahsa Rostami). But the promotion almost immediately brings disappointment and tension: Iman, a thoughtful and decent man, is stunned to discover that he is expected to rubber-stamp death-penalty judgments without reading the evidence. He is told that he must now be secretive with friends and family who could be threatened and doxed by criminal elements as a way of pressuring him.
B)
Most fatefully of all, he is issued a handgun for his family’s protection, apparently without any training or guidance as to how to use or store it. Naive Iman casually leaves it lying around the house and tucks it in the back of his trousers like a Hollywood gangster. (Are Iranian prosecutors really allowed to be so casual with firearms?)
When the anti-hijab protests explode in Iran, whatever liberal scruples Iman once had are suppressed. He coldly rebukes his daughters over dinner for their rebellious feminist views and accuses them of falling for the propaganda of enemies and foreign elements. “What foreign elements?” his daughters demand – but Iman sullenly refuses to elaborate. (Here is a flaw in the film, surely – in real life, Iman would make some very specific, ugly, paranoid claims.) When his wife and daughters help a terrified young female anti-hijab protester who has been shot in the face by the police, this too must be concealed from Iman. And then, catastrophe – Iman’s gun goes missing and, with increasing resentment and fury, he suspects one of the women of his family has taken it and is lying to him. His toxic outrage bleeds into the fabric of the film itself.
C)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig starts out in the modern world of Instagram reels and YouTube, composed in the complex and oblique style that we have got used to in Iranian cinema in films by Asghar Farhadi: a world of subtle, realist implications that has arguably replaced the fashion in Iranian cinema for the poetic and the sublime. Rasoulof’s mysterious parable Iron Island from 2005 is a good example. It is possible to watch this movie and initially assume (as I admit I did) that the obvious prime suspect for the gun-theft is not a family member and their refusal to mention the probable culprit’s name is a symptom of their unease at having widened the circle of trust to someone outside the family – an indication of their repression and groupthink dysfunction.
D)
But no. The answer lies elsewhere and emerges almost casually as the drama evolves into something almost jaw-dropping. We get a car chase, violence, and a final demonstration of Chekhov’s rule about what happens to a gun produced in act one. And yes, perhaps the point is that The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a film to be finally understood in precisely those enigmatic, poetic and symbolic terms that looked to have been superseded in Iranian cinema – and that the realist depictions of what Iran has become are to be found in the smartphone footage being shared on social media. The film may not be perfect, but its courage – and relevance – are beyond doubt.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig screened at the Cannes film festival, and is in UK and Irish cinemas from 7 February.
[Reviews and Comments] Review of "The Sacred Fig Seed": "Family and Guns" A shocking work that exposes the critical point of the Iranian state [Spoilers after warning]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KXj0begVR4
