Political hotheads start revolutions but it’s the apolitical masses who win them when they abandon the old regime. The Seed of the Sacred Fig was shot in secret in Iran by Mohammad Rasoulof and it’s set against the backdrop of the Masa Amini protests of 2022. This was the moment when, after the Iranian morality police killed a young woman for not wearing a hijab, nationwide civil unrest broke out and for a moment it looked like the regime was going to topple. It survived to fight another day, which lends Rasoulof’s film an extra piquancy. His film is history as written by the losers not the winners, an examination of something very like that Amini moment from inside an average Iranian family. Big politics played out in a domestic setting.
Dad Iman (Missagh Zareh) works for the regime. He’s just got a promotion and is now a prosecutor. Mum Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) hopes this means they’ll be able to move to a bigger house. Meanwhile she keeps the show on the road, sending her kids out to school every day, telling them to keep their noses clean by obeying the various dress codes. Daughters Sana and Rezvan are young women who just want to live their lives without being told what to wear or how much eyeliner to use. The Amini stand-ins, if you like.
Outside on the streets protest is kicking off at the regime’s latest outrage. Inside, on the TV screens, its channels are putting their own spin on events (it’s foreign provocation etc). Sana and Rezvan know at first hand this isn’t true. They go to school, mix with other young people and watch social media feeds.
Dad is a decent man out of his depth. At work he’s encouraged to sentence protesters to death on barely any evidence. Unhappily compliant, this goes against his code of ethics. It’s also troubling him to suddenly see the regime in the way its detractors portray it. But he goes along with things. Mum, the most insulated from external events because her domain is the household, remains the status quo’s staunchest supporter. Whatever the authorities says is god’s law, she insists – no matter what brutality is going on outside.
People often talk about “brave” movies but this really is one. The casting of the teenage daughters, for instance. Setareh Maleki and Mahsa Rostani, who play them, are both in their 30s. Knowing how dangerous it was, Rasoulof wouldn’t ask real teenagers to take on roles that might get them jailed (or worse). He wanted women who understood what they were getting themselves into. In the end it was Rasoulof himself who wound up being arrested by the authorities. He escaped and fled to Europe, where the film won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes.
It’s deserved. It’s not just a cool look at a hot moment but also a gripping family drama. Though Missagh Zareh has his moments as the dad (especially when Iman’s gun goes missing and he completely overreacts), Soheila Golestani is the character around which the drama revolves. For the regime to topple, the ostensibly disengaged Najmeh must, totemically, move. Will she, won’t she? Golestani skilfully plays Najmeh as a woman both in hock to the regime but also with a great love for her daughters. Surely at some point Najmeh will start to take what they’re saying at face value.
The personal cost of supporting a rotten regime is Rasoulof’s other big idea, in particular the reality-distorting lengths people will go to in order to keep a worldview intact. Who snitches on their own daughters to the secret police? Because that’s what ends up happening here. How far is Najmeh going to follow Iman’s lead? Is he really going to import the regime’s corrupt rationalising into his own home?
Yes, it’s quite dark, but Rasoulof manages to leave us with the merest glimmer of hope. We know that Masa Amini protests didn’t work. Maybe next time?
The Seed of the Sacred Fig – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
