The government of Iran has long imposed restrictions on the country’s filmmakers. But after the mass protests sparked by the 2022 death of Mahsa Jina Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish woman reportedly tortured by the Islamic Republic’s “morality” police for allegedly not wearing her veil correctly, the censorship became even more Draconian. Fewer film permits were issued. Iranian producers were warned that movies featuring actresses who removed their hijabs in support of the Women Life Freedom movement, as it became known, could be banned.
Writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof followed news of the uprising as a political prisoner jailed for the third time. Rasoulof is a vocal critic of the regime, and his films have all been banned in Iran, including the award-winning A Man of Integrity and There Is No Evil. Upon his release, Rasoulof found the spirit of rebellion was still in the air. “Actresses decided to no longer take parts in projects where they had to wear the compulsory headscarf,” he says through an interpreter, adding that many crew members felt the same way. “I received a lot of messages and signals from people who wanted to work my way. This gave me the confidence to find ways to tell stories despite the risks.” Still, he made sure his collaborators understood the possible repercussions of defying the government.
Rasoulof’s latest film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, was shot entirely in secret, with a small cast (who did their own stunts) and crew, using minimal equipment. It follows a privileged Tehran family whose patriarch, Iman (Misagh Zare), is promoted to the post of investigative judge in the Revolutionary Guard Court just as the Women Life Freedom demonstrations begin. At first, Iman’s dutiful wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), thinks only of future perks—like a three-bedroom apartment—that his ascension will bring. She is determined that their two sheltered daughters—college student Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and high-schooler Sana (Setareh Maleki)—remain “irreproachable.”
But the resistance on the streets quickly enters their home. First, via the girls’ phones. (Actual cell-phone footage of demonstrators being tear-gassed and fired on with live ammunition and metal pellets is interspersed throughout the film.) Later, Rezvan shelters her gravely injured Kurdish friend Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi). When Iman’s newly issued service revolver goes missing, the paranoid investigator turns his chilling interrogation techniques on his own family.
“I received a lot of messages and signals from people who wanted to work my way,” Rasoulof says. “This gave me the confidence to find ways to tell stories despite the risks.”
“At the beginning of the film we do see a human facet to Iman,” Rasoulof says about the religious man who shows pangs of conscience after being directed to sign off on an indictment without investigating. But when the disappearance of his gun jeopardizes his career, “he’s so enthralled by the prospect of becoming a judge that he decides to submit to power,” the director adds. “Of course, submission to power is an essential pillar of my film.”
Rasoulof used mandatory permits issued for projects other than a feature-length movie. He kept a distance from the set, directing the film remotely, for 74 non-consecutive days over three months, and when necessary, he shut down production over security concerns. The film’s editor, who spoke no Farsi, cut the footage outside Iran.
Najmeh’s eyes are opened to the brutality being meted out by authorities when she removes metal pellets from Sadaf’s face. Rasoulof says the young woman’s maiming is based on a true story. Afterward, as Najmeh breaks down crying in the bathroom, we hear a Kurdish nursery rhyme mothers sing to their children. The moment mirrors an earlier sequence in which Najmeh grooms Iman as an excerpt from an Iranian poem is recited. “That music and poem indicate how in my culture submission to power has very ancient roots,” the director says. Could a scene like that appear in a government-sanctioned film? Rasoulof replies with an emphatic no. “It’s forbidden to show people touching one another.”
When The Seed of the Sacred Fig was selected for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Rasoulof’s passport had already been confiscated, and he was facing an eight-year prison sentence. He was secreted out of the country to Germany, where his family has lived in exile for more than a decade. Many of the film’s actors, including Rostami, Maleki, and Akhshi, have fled in turn, leaving their families behind. Zare was carefully monitored for a while, but Rasoulof says he has since left Iran and is currently acting in a play in Australia.
Of the film’s stars, only Golestani—who was arrested for appearing in a video without a headscarf during the uprising, and whose passport was also confiscated—remains in Iran. Rasoulof says she’s living under great pressure from the government, which has leveled new charges against the actress. However, since Germany submitted his 2024 Cannes Jury Prize winner as its entry for the Academy Award for best international feature film, the regime “is behaving more humanely” toward her.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig is currently in theaters
Lisa Liebman is a writer whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, the Cut, and W magazine
