By Kayvan Kaboli
Warning: This review contains spoilers.
Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, this year’s Oscar nominee for Best International Feature, was re-released in cinemas across the U.S. and Europe just weeks before the Academy Awards ceremony.
The movie begins with an unusual statement that may only be meaningful to people from southern Iran:
“The sacred fig tree has an unusual life cycle. Its seeds fall onto other trees through the droppings of birds. These seeds sprout and send roots downward to the ground. The plant’s branches envelop the host tree, gradually strangling it.”
The story follows Iman (Misagh Zareh), who is appointed as an interrogator for Tehran’s Revolutionary Courts—a stepping stone to becoming a judge within the government’s oppressive legal system. His new position brings power, privileges, and a gun for protection. But it also coincides with the nationwide protests following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, putting Iran’s judicial system under immense pressure due to the mass arrests of young demonstrators. Iman unquestioningly signs off on execution sentences without reviewing case files, fully embracing his role in the regime’s machinery of repression.
Meanwhile, his family—his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) and their two daughters, 21-year-old Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and teenage Sana (Setareh Maleki)—begin to feel the weight of the protests as well. The story takes a sharp turn when Iman’s handgun, which he keeps in his bedside drawer, goes missing. At the same time, Rezvan’s close friend is shot in the eye with pellets by government forces. These two events plunge the family into a psychological crisis, with paranoia gripping Iman. Convinced that someone in his household has taken the gun, he makes the fateful decision to interrogate his own wife and daughters—an act that ultimately seals both his family’s fate and, symbolically, that of the Iranian regime itself.
Rasoulof’s 2-hour-and-45-minute thriller keeps viewers on edge, weaving a tightly structured and deeply layered narrative. Every frame is packed with meaning, and the film dissects its themes with surgical precision. Even generational differences in opposition to the regime are clearly defined: Rezvan may ideologically oppose her interrogator father, but it is the fearless and rebellious Sana—the voice of Iran’s younger generation—who ultimately brings him down.
One of the film’s most powerful images comes in the final scene: a hand emerging from the rubble, wearing a ring associated with Qasem Soleimani, the late commander of Iran’s Quds Force. Throughout the film, cardboard cutouts of Soleimani appear in courtrooms, reinforcing the omnipresence of state propaganda. The same ring is first noticed by Sana when she glimpses it on her father’s hand during an interrogation and later on the steering wheel of his car. In that moment, she makes up her mind to resist him.
Rasoulof masterfully highlights how young Iranians, despite the regime’s censorship, remain informed through social media. Just as they follow the news on their phones, they also learn how to use weapons via YouTube—a reality Iman only grasps in his final moments, his face frozen in disbelief.
As his paranoia deepens, Iman takes his family to his childhood home in Yazd—a historic desert city known for its ancient architecture and religious traditions. The house, with its solitary confinement-like rooms, becomes a prison for Najmeh and Rezvan, while Sana manages to escape. She hides in an abandoned part of the property, filled with relics from old religious ceremonies.
While searching for tools of resistance, she finds two old cassette tapes and plays one in a recorder. The second song is by Marzieh, a beloved Iranian singer who was forced into exile after the 1979 revolution and became a vocal critic of the regime.
The film’s precise depiction of interrogators, the act of interrogation, and the characteristics of the regime’s oppressive apparatus stems from Rasoulof’s personal experience as a political prisoner in Iran since 2012. Viewers might expect him to portray the torture and interrogation of political detainees from the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, but instead, he chooses to focus on Iman interrogating his own family. His wife, trapped between the benefits of her husband’s position and the suffering of their daughters, has no real choice—she, too, becomes a victim of his violence.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig was secretly filmed in Iran and edited in Germany after Rasoulof’s clandestine escape. It premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize. Throughout the film, Rasoulof incorporates real footage from the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, bridging the fictional world of Iman’s household with the stark reality of Iranian streets in 2022. If The Seed of the Sacred Fig wins this year’s Oscar, these protest scenes will once again reach a global audience.
However, Rasoulof faces stiff competition in the Best International Feature category—particularly from Emilia Pérez, a powerful and critically acclaimed contender.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig is more than a film—it is an act of defiance. Through its gripping narrative, sharp symbolism, and unflinching portrayal of power and resistance, Rasoulof delivers a cinematic indictment of Iran’s oppressive regime. This is not just a story about one man’s downfall but about a generation’s fight for justice. Whether or not it takes home the Oscar, the film has already left its mark—both as a work of art and as a historical document of a nation in upheaval.
