In the nearly 20 years that I've been attending the Cannes Film Festival, I've rarely witnessed anything as emotional as I did last May, when the Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof arrived for the world premiere screening of his new movie, The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
As he walked up the red carpeted steps and entered the theater to thunderous applause, Rasoulof didn't look like a man who had been on the run just two weeks earlier. He fled his country after receiving an eight-year prison sentence — hardly the first time he's run afoul of the government, which, since 2010, has frequently arrested him, jailed him and banned him from filmmaking. Like some of his other movies, The Seed of the Sacred Fig was shot entirely in secret.
That can't have been easy to pull off, though in some ways, it makes a certain sense for a drama that's all about the corrosive nature of secrets and lies. Misagh Zare plays a lawyer named Iman, who's just been promoted to investigating judge, a job so dangerous that he's been issued a gun for his protection.
Iman's wife, Najmeh, played by Soheila Golestani, is excited about the news; with Iman's higher salary, they can at last afford a bigger home. But they warn their two daughters — 21-year-old Rezvan and teenage Sana — that they must be irreproachable in their behavior, so as not to harm their father's reputation. That means wearing the hijab in public, keeping a low profile on social media and not hanging out with the wrong people.
But Rezvan and Sana are both smart, observant and increasingly critical of their parents' traditionalism, especially in light of the news. The story takes place in 2022, during the early days of the "Woman, life, freedom" movement. Those protests erupted after a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman died in the custody of the morality police, which had arrested her for allegedly wearing a hijab improperly.
Rasoulof includes real-life footage of the protests and ensuing acts of police violence, giving the movie a jolt of documentary immediacy. But he also shows us how Iran's social unrest impacts the family directly. When one of her friends is injured at a rally, Rezvan becomes increasingly supportive of the movement, to her parents' chagrin. But even Iman has his doubts about the government he serves. He's demoralized by his new job, which forces him to interrogate — and likely imprison — hundreds of protestors.
Rasoulof has never been shy about calling out Iran's authoritarian regime, as he did in earlier movies like Manuscripts Don't Burn and There Is No Evil. What makes The Seed of the Sacred Fig so gripping over its nearly three-hour running time is how assuredly it blends domestic drama and topical thriller, the personal and the political.
The family home becomes a psychological war zone, where secrets fester behind closed doors and every character has something to hide. The actors are uniformly superb; I especially liked the nuanced sibling dynamic between Mahsa Rostami, as the sensitive, thoughtful older sister, and Setareh Maleki, as the slyer, more mischievous younger one. Rasoulof's sympathies are clearly with them and the Woman, Life, Freedom protestors. But he also extends compassion to the parents, especially Iman, who, as Rezvan courageously points out, is too entrenched in the system to see that the system is wrong.
Just as the family's home is starting to feel unbearably claustrophobic, the movie shifts gears. There's a sudden change in scenery, and after the slow-simmering suspense of the first half, Rasoulof pushes the drama into full-blown action-movie territory: there's a high-speed car chase, an on-camera interrogation and, finally, a tense climax that suggests a showdown out of a classic Western.
It's a bold stroke, and while not everyone will make the leap, I appreciate Rasoulof's willingness to flex his genre muscles in service of a larger point. The family in this story isn't just a family; it's a kind of microcosm of middle class Iranian society, with deep rifts between people across genders and generations. Meaningful change may be possible, Rasoulof seems to be saying, but it will be inevitably painful and violent.
It's a bleak conclusion, but it's also suffused with a deep sense of mourning. Mohammad Rasoulof may have left Iran, but not once during this stunning movie is his love for his country ever in doubt.
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