Iran today, the US tomorrow? Mohammed Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) recent past may be our prolog

A film shot mostly in secrecy, the filmmaker under arrest and sentenced to 8 years and flogging, a film shining a light on suppression of women’s rights. freedom of expression, and theocratic oppression, seen through the filter of compromised values, working for a state that claims to represent the will of God, and the toll this can take on a family. The family might be fictional, but it would surprise me not at all to find examples close enough to reality that could be substituted for the work at hand.

In modern day Tehran, a functionary is promoted to an investigative judge. He’s served loyally and well and conscientiously for twenty years, and now seems positioned to be on easy street. The government housing for officials promises more space and each of his daughters a room of their own. What e didn’t count on is that he didn’t gain the promotion through his own merit; the guy before him got canned for not filling out the paperwork for a death sentence without due process. Iman is reluctant to sign, as well, but his colleague Ghaderi convinces him to do so. Ghederi also informs Iman that his boss doesn’t like him and is waiting for him to screw up. He’s also give a gun, for protection, and is entreaties to keep details of his position from his family. 

We’re in serious Chekhov territory but even that doesn’t quite play out the way you think it might. Iman’s wife Najmeh is happy about the promotion, but not about the gun. His girls Rezvan and Sana, don’t know about the gun, though while happy for their dad and their soon to be improved circumstances, they don’t get the secrecy. 

This latter is put to the test when Rezvan’s fellow student and friend Sadaf enters the scene. Through cajoling, Rezvan gets her mother to ace to letting Sadaf stay over one night until her dorm is ready the following day. In the meantime, demonstrations and protests are taking place across the city and the country against the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini who died in a Tehran hospital under “mysterious conditions.” She had been arrested by the Guidance Patrol (Iran’s religious police force) for not wearing the hijab up to government standards. The official verdict was she died of a stroke, despite eye-witnesses who said she had been beaten to death by the police. The protests that erupted were the largest yet, even more so than those of the Arab Spring. The Woman, Life, Freedom Movement was born from her death.

Actual footage from social media of the brutal state crackdown on the protests acts as a visceral glue of the context for the fraying and breakdown of Iman’s family. As the arrests mount up, so too do the number of death sentences Iman submits. All of this takes a toll on him, but what happens at home is the nexus of the film. Rezvan spirits a bloody Sadaf into their home to tend to her wounds. Najmeh returns from a subterfuge and tends to Sadaf’s wounds. We see her picking objects from Sadaf’s face; blood soaked bug-shot dances in the sink as Najmeh sets to washing up. 

Because of the stakes for what would happen to Iman were Sadaf found at their house, Najmeh forces Sadaf to leave. The tension within the family escalates, mirroring the escalation of tension and violence in the city outside. Sadaf is eventually arrested at her dorm and disappeared. At Revzan’s pleading, Najmeh visits a friend, the wife of Aliezar, who works as an interrogator. Can he find out what’s happened to the woman?

The sisters are increasingly distraught at their mother’s denial of what’s happening. She believes the news and stands firm that the protesters have coming to them what they get. The State is only doing God’s will, after all. 

Iman is seen at dinner less and less; his caseload growing incrementally. At one point, his gun goes missing. If he reports that he has lost it, he faces a three-year prison sentence and the loss of all credibility due to incompetence. Before long, his apprehension grows into paranoia. One of the girls is lying. Ghedari is non-plussed that Iman told his family what he does. He gives him a second gun and tells him to find out who took it.

When it become obvious that no one’s talking, Ghedari tells him he should have Aliezar interrogate them. Frame it as a therapy session; he’ll be able to figure out who did it and that’ll be that. What happens is not that. All three women are forced into signing off on what I can assume are confessions of having associated with Safad. 

Eventually, Iman, increasingly on edge and paranoid, and now further compromised since his name and address have been uncovered and published, has to write his superior and takes off with his family to lie low until the heat on him lessens. The film’s climax at his childhood home is nail-biting and I’ll not spoil anything, but it becomes clear that Iman has had a less nurturing, less paternal side to his nature, and all of this feeds thematically, and organically so, into the film’s narrative.

It’s not difficult to interpret Iman as The State, Najmeh as the supporters of the status quo (particularly those who either out of fear/self-preservation prefer to tow the party line), and the girls as representatives of the spirit of protest and the fight for freedom. But Mousalef’s film is not didactic. It doesn’t need to be. The personal is the political under an authoritarian regime. Lines are drawn between people according to how they respond to oppression. 

When Iman calls the women who are protesting sluts and how they run around naked at the protests, Revzan calls him out. When he accuses of her of listening to the enemy, she simply replies “what enemy”. Her mother was equally staunch but after the encounter with Safad, we see her giving way to understanding that what the State wants you to believe is not reality. 

The performances anchor the film as humanistically as any I’ve seen this year. Soheila Golestani as Najmeh hss the heaviest lifting to do as her awareness grows of what her children are facing and how Iman changes from a hard-working breadwinner into becoming more and more secretive and authoritarian himself. To this end, Missagh Zareh brings a rich humanity to a man under pressure from just trying to keep his job to having buried his values under the weight of signing off on the deaths of thousands. Later in the film when he opines that they get what’s coming to them, you have to ask what lies a person has to tell themselves to believe them. As Revzan and Sana respectively, Mahsa Rostami and Seareh  Maleki are distinct, full realized young women, and both characters are motivated by what they’ve witnessed online and in the streets. 

As I watched, I couldn’t help but think how close we feel to this as our future. This week, we’ve seen sweeping acts of destructive edicts from the regime that are already costing lives. How long before we take to the streets and will the administration utilize the same tactics as the Iranian Republic? We’ve seen similar brutality happen here; it’s not a stretch to imagine that given the appointments to loyalists to the president, there would be furtive arrests, disappearances, and frankly, bloodshed. 

The majority of people don’t realize the straits they’re in under authoritarianism until it’s too late. Those co-opted by the regime will, like  Iman, turn a blind eye to torture and oppression and convince themselves the State is right and that it is, indeed, God’s will. The majority will, like Najmeh, stay quiet, support the State, and do their best to keep their heads down. A few, like Rezvan and Sana, will speak up and put their lives on the line, while likely risking relationships with family and friends. 

The Seeds of the Sacred Fig is in running as Germany’s entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature. It is amply worthy. It would send a strong statement were it to win, but like many things in this world, I’m not counting on it or much else.

Most of the cast and crew are in exile. One exception is Soheila Golstani (Najmeh) who has been banned from leaving Iran. The charges against her are propaganda against the Iranian regime and promoting immorality for her part in the film. 

None of this is surprising. Totalitarians fear art and artists. When truth is spoken to power, power tries to quash the speech. But it can’t completely destroy the truth. 

Watching the documentary footage in the film, I couldn’t help but wonder what the reaction would be here if the state so openly and brazenly beat, abducted, and murdered in full daylight sons, daughters, wives, husbands. Many in this country feel like it can’t happen here even as it is happening. Many don’t care because detention is only for immigrants. Many don’t care because DEI and woeness are somehow considered antithetical to the egalitarianism enshrined in the Constitution. For them, the harassment and dehumanization of trans people is a non-issue. They feel like BIPOC people already have everything they need. And regulations? Why shouldn’t businesses be able to do what they need to turn a profit without government interference?

This country has gone mad in electing an avaricious, ignorant, and petty tyrant to its highest office. In little over a week, we are already feeling the impact of that choice. Don’t tell me that what we see in a film like this can’t happen here. Pay attention to art, listen to artists. Listen to the moment.