Recipient of the Cannes Special Jury Award in 2024, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig opens with the words: ‘this film was made in secret. When there is no way, a way must be made.’ It’s a stirring statement of defiance from the film’s admirably disobedient director Mohammad Rasoulof (There Is No Evil, Manuscripts Don’t Burn), who has consistently outraged the Iranian authorities with his cinematic output, risking his own safety and liberty. Last year he was sentenced to eight years in prison and has been in exile ever since.

Recalling the taut, accessible domestic dramas of Rasoulof’s compatriot Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, The Salesman), who has perhaps enjoyed more global recognition, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig takes terrifying oppression and societal discord and renders them horrifyingly ordinary.

Set in Tehran, it follows Iman (Missagh Zareh), a recently appointed investigating judge in the country’s revolutionary court who is struggling with the dubious morality of his new position, while remaining fundamentally loyal to the brutal regime.

The danger and scrutiny Iman’s new position brings, leads him and his comparably devout wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) to clamp down on their daughters’ freedoms. Their eldest, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami), is a 21-year-old student who, with protests on the rise especially among her peers, has begun to question her family’s political position, while her teenage sister Sana (Setareh Maleki) nurses similar feelings. When a friend of Rezvan’s is caught up in the disorder and seeks refuge with the family, a domestic rupture is triggered, with Najmeh showing some support for her daughters, while remaining wary of the potential for fallout. Later, the gun Iman has been issued for protection goes missing and the finger of suspicion lands on each family member in turn.

Rasoulof has produced something remarkable here, a cultural induction that demands to be seen, and that grips like a thriller for every second of its 168-minute duration. The sisters’ obsession with social media (which, for all its flaws, provides them with an unfiltered window on external events, in contrast to the government-skewed bias of TV news) is relatable, as is a desire to rebel against their parents’ increasingly problematic authority, with the injustice of their vanishing rights hard to bear. 

If Iman’s stance is frustrating and his spiralling mental state frightening, this humane film is also sympathetic to his own plight, up to a point. It shines a light on his personal turmoil, showing his initial pushback against an order to blindly rubber stamp a death warrant, and the way in which responsibilities hang on him so heavily they are almost worn like a physical load.

The ensemble deserve huge credit for the integrity and complexity of their performances, with Zareh an increasingly menacing presence, and Golestani communicating the conflict and confusion of a woman who is loyal to her husband and broadly supportive (if undoubtedly quite fearful) of the regime, but still remains fiercely protective of her daughters. Rostami and Maleki are unnervingly convincing too, as young women trying to grow and figure out who they are in a smothering environment.

Despite the film’s strong sense of wider context, as we watch strife spread across Iran, the locations are largely confined to domestic interiors, creating a simmering sense of claustrophobia, paranoia and ultimately threat, before things escalate into something more outlandishly cinematic. Real images of political protest (captured following the death of the young, Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022) are inserted into this fictional story, enhancing its credibility, putting fire in its belly and showing what’s really at stake.

As that opening text suggests, the clandestine nature of the shoot made things incredibly challenging, with news of Rasoulof’s prison sentence arriving in its midst, while the director has said the circumstances made him feel like a ‘gangster making art’.

It is astonishing what has been achieved here against the odds. The Seed Of The Sacred Fig is a blistering examination of what we lose when we limit rights and blindly obey orders. Rasoulof describes cinema as ‘freedom’, a place for him to rage against restrictions. Long may he enjoy the freedom to make it.

The Seed Of The Sacred Fig is in cinemas from Friday 7 February.