Filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof delivers a gripping dissident drama, about an official whose ambitions bring him into conflict with his family and the system he serves.
Dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, a longtime critic of the regime, shot his latest, The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Special Jury Prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival) clandestinely — fleeing the country after receiving an 8-year prison sentence.
His new film is a tense familial drama: when Iman is promoted to investigating judge on Tehran’s high court, he and his wife, Najmeh, are excited for their elevated social status. But when his government-issued gun goes missing while his daughters Resvan and Sana are glued to their phones, expressing support for women-led student protests, Iman grows increasingly paranoid and mistrusting of his own loved ones.
Not only a lacerating critique of a patriarchal regime crumbling from within, but “a thriller of propulsive skill and blunt emotional force, marrying the muscularity of an action film to the psychological intensity of a chamber drama.”
—Justin Chang, The New Yorker