The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Iman (Missagh Zareh) has just been promoted to Investigator, a stepping stone to the prestigious and lucrative position of Judge in Iran. But there’s a catch: He’s now expected to blindly follow the dictates of the authoritarian Iranian government. When his wife (Soheila Golestani) and two daughters (Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki) show some sympathy for protesters demanding human rights on the streets of Tehran, he begins to harden in defense of an unjust system. Writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof, himself a former prisoner of conscience, was forced to flee his homeland after authorities learned about the subject matter of his film. With his four brilliant actors, he shows, with meticulous clarity, compassion and poignance, how totalitarian rule can erode even the bonds between parent and child, husband and wife. Agonizingly painful, yet thrilling in its moral clarity, The Seed of the Sacred Fig provides one of cinema’s most emphatic statements of the necessity of freedom. (Telluride Film Festival)