The Seed of the Sacred Fig
When a judge’s service pistol disappears, mounting political unrest turns a Tehran family against itself as suspicion, fear and authoritarian power invade their home.
Iman is appointed as an investigating judge at Tehran’s Revolutionary Court. His promotion brings both prestige and a new burden – as protests erupt across the country, he is expected to enforce the state’s increasingly severe response. Meanwhile, his wife and two daughters are watching the events unfold on social media, increasingly questioning the system their father serves.
When his service pistol mysteriously disappears, the tensions inside the family reach breaking point. Suspicion turns inward as father, mother and daughters become trapped in a struggle over trust, authority and belief. What begins as a family drama gradually transforms into a claustrophobic portrait of a society consumed by fear and paranoia.
With The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Mohammad Rasoulof connects the intimate and the political with extraordinary force. The film was made under the threat of repression in Iran, and its story draws directly on the nationwide protests of 2022. Moving between the streets of Tehran and the increasingly oppressive confines of the family home, Rasoulof examines how authoritarian power penetrates private life — shaping relationships, eroding trust and turning even a family into a battleground.
The film premiered in competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it received the Special Jury Prize. Rasoulof himself had fled Iran shortly before the premiere after being sentenced to prison and receiving a flogging sentence for his filmmaking and criticism of the Iranian authorities.
On 4 September, Mohammad Rasoulof joins us at De Balie for The Aesthetics of Tyranny, a conversation about power, repression and the representation of tyranny in his work. In the weeks that follow, we present a small retrospective of Rasoulof’s films, offering the opportunity to discover his remarkable body of work on the big screen.
