The Seed of the Sacred Fig

It’s all about power’s capacity to corrupt and in that sense, it’s a universal story, but it’s also another courageous indictment of the Iranian system.

With The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Mohammad Rasoulof has crafted a searing morality tale powered by charged performances

It's gripping; it's made with real peril... it discusses a national malaise in a way that works on a personal level.

This is not a perfect film but it is a gripping, courageous one that is well worth watching.

Given the stakes, The Seed of the Sacred Fig would be admirable even if it weren’t such a very fine film. But it is.

Understated performances and unflashy filmmaking coalesce into an absorbing mixture of the personal and the political. It may take its time but, given the circumstances of its making, this is an extraordinary achievement.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is an amazing film. You can sense the peril and passion in every frame.

Rasoulof uses the contours of a paranoid thriller, one that has the audience making fists of tension, to examine how life in Iran’s authoritarian regime — and, by extension, any authoritarian system — has rigged the game against its own people.

If the final stage of the film falls back on familiar ‘women in peril’ scenarios, and leans heavily towards melodrama, it has the advantage of being rooted in the family dynamic that Rasoulof has carefully established before.

Powerful, bold, evocative filmmaking.