Cannes 2024: The Seed of the Sacred Fig

      The Seed of the Sacred Fig (by Mohammad Rasoulof) may be an imperfect film, but it is the undisputed highlight of the Cannes program. There are films that are more polyphonic and more elegant. There are experiments in the sphere of film language or provocations. But Mohammad Rasoulof creates “direct action cinema”, capable of intervening and influencing reality. It speaks about authoritarianism and theocracy in Iran, about merciless misogyny, about the persecution of dissidents.

      Iman  is an ambitious lawyer who has just been promoted to state investigator. That's a step short of being a full judge in the revolutionary court. He gets a better accommodation for his family: wife and two student-age daughters. But he immediately discovers that he is expected to rubber-stamp death-penalty judgments without reading the evidence. Also he is told that he must now be secretive with friends and family who could be pressured by criminal elements.

     When the anti-hijab protests explode, Iman rebukes his daughters over dinner for their rebellious feminist views, and accuses them of falling for the enemy and foreign elements’ propaganda. “What foreign elements?” his daughters demand – but Iman sullenly refuses to elaborate.

     When his wife and daughters help a terrified young female anti-hijab protester who has been shot in the face by the police, it has to be concealed from Iman.

     And then, catastrophe happens– Iman’s gun goes missing. At some point, the court drama turns into a crazy surreal thriller, which unfolds in the labyrinth of an ancient city. “The gun,” as Stanislavsky bequeathed, “must absolutely go off” - and this weapon becomes the main character of the film.

     Mohammad Rasoulof is an Iranian dissident wanted by the police in his own country, where he has was sentenced to a long prison sentence and flogging. Now he has come to Cannes with this extraordinary and believable drama drawn from his own situation and the agony of his country.

    The title of the film refers to the ancient sacred tree in all religions - the fig tree - the mythology of which represents the circle of life and death.