Overview
A man, his family and a firearm: all three sit at the heart of The Seed of the Sacred Fig. A girl and a gun might've been late, great French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's perfect formula for a movie, but Iranian writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof now adapts that setup around his own cinematic passion: fighting back against the Iranian regime. IRL, over the course of more than two decades, he's faced the wrath of his homeland's censorship, seen his work banned, been prohibited from making movies and from leaving the country, and endured multiple prison sentences. When Rasoulof's eighth and latest masterful and moving feature debuted at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, he was in attendance after fleeing Iran, where a new eight-year jail term had just been handed down.
The first shoots of the idea for The Seed of the Sacred Fig came to the filmmaker while the now-exiled talent was incarcerated. Imprisoned during the 2022–23 Women, Life, Freedom protests that sprang from the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, he saw the movement from inside Evin Prison in Tehran. Upon his release, it became part of his new big-screen narrative, with the picture even incorporating real on-the-ground footage. Also guiding The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a question that Rasoulof has long contemplated from his dealings with the regime — and that flowed through in his prior film, 2020 Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear-winner There Is No Evil — also: "how do people who work with the system function internally?".
As the protests about the loss of a woman arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly also were, Rasoulof's Best International Feature Oscar-nominee is a snapshot of generational clashes and change, too. The man: Iman (Missagh Zareh, Homeless), who has just been promoted to investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court. The family: his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani, Two Dogs), college-aged daughter Rezvan (debutant Mahsa Rostami) and younger offspring Sana (Setareh Maleki, Cafe). The gun: Imam's service piece, freshly bestowed upon him for his new role. When the weapon goes missing, he starts pointing fingers, already paranoid about the public fallout from his job and now suspecting those closest to him — the youngest of which are only just learning what he does for a living. Adding to the powder-keg situation: the nationwide political uprising, which has Imam signing death sentences, comes to his home courtesy of Rezvan's friend Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi, The Lion Skin) and puts the family matriarch at odds with his horrified daughters.
At Cannes — where Rasoulof's 2013 film Manuscripts Don't Burn won the FIPRESCI Prize and his 2017 feature A Man of Integrity emerged victorious in the Un Certain Regard section — The Seed of the Sacred Fig collected five different accolades from its berth in the main competition, a Special Jury Prize among them. Other film festival audience awards have also come its way, including in Sydney, plus nominations at the Golden Globes and BAFTAs. To get the movie to viewers, though, and to make it to begin with, involved shooting in secret with Rasoulof largely unable to be on set. Then came the 28-day journey out of Iran to Germany, the country that The Seed of the Sacred Fig represents at the 2025 Academy Awards.
What does the global response to the film — the festival slots, popping up at Locarno, Melbourne, New Zealand, Telluride, Toronto, New York, Busan, London, Adelaide and Brisbane events as well, and many others; the nominations and prizes, right through to the Oscars — mean to Rasoulof given what he went through to bring the movie to fruition and ensure that audiences could see it? "I'm very happy that a film that half of which had not yet been shot exactly one year ago, while we were shooting, is being seen by worldwide audiences and doing so well," he tells Concrete Playground. "And I think it's not just me. I think everyone involved in its making is very happy, because what brought us together really was fighting for artistic freedom — and all we dreamt of was managing to complete the shoot without being arrested."
How does Rasoulof navigate the scrutiny, oppression and attempted censorship that comes his way each time that he makes a film? How did The Seed of the Sacred Fig evolve from seeing how Iranian women were protesting to following a family of three women and an investigating judge impacted by the uprising? What does the reality of directing a movie in secret entail — and what impact does it have on the finished product, given how much energy is expended just to avoid the authorities' attention? Digging into a powerful picture that's designed to inspire questions with the man behind it, we also asked Rasoulof about all of the above.
On Navigating the Scrutiny, Oppression and Attempted Censorship That Rasoulof Faces Whenever He Makes a Film
"Well, I think the biggest difference, if I think about one year ago and now, is hope. Of course, I did have hope one year ago, but the hope I have now is much greater.
It was really like a small crack through which the lights came in that I could see in the distance. And it's grown, and this gives me greater energy to continue working and to continue living. And I don't think it's just me. I think again, all my cast and crew feel exactly the same way or similarly."
On How The Seed of the Sacred Fig Evolved From Seeing How Iranian Women Were Protesting to Following a Family of Three Women and an Investigating Judge Impacted by the Uprising
"For many years, I was very curious about the people who work in the regime, in the different parts of the regime that I had dealings with — the security operators, the censorship operators, the judiciary. And I was really concerned with trying to understand, on the one hand, how they think, but also while they interrogated me, I'd be wondering 'how do we differ? Why are they unable to understand me and why am I unable to understand them?'.
And so this curiosity stayed for me, and I was always hoping I could find an opportunity to explore it in a film.
In 2022, I was arrested a few months before the Woman, Life, Freedom movement began. And after the movement began — at its height, in fact — I had a chance encounter with a senior prison official, who told me how he'd come to hate himself and even thought about taking his life because of his job and his collaboration with the regime, and how fiercely he got criticised and pressurised all the time by his children because of his job.
And at that point I thought it would be really interesting to tell a story about a family where such a big divide had arisen, but which would also, at the same time, allow me to pursue that question that had stayed with me for all these years about how do people who work with the system function internally."
On the Parallels Between the Film Being Made Clandestinely and the Secrets Being Kept Among the Family in the Movie
"The limitations move along with you from the moment you start writing the script. They always accompany you when, of course, you're working in a repressive regime. And so you've got to find new ways ahead to make your film, but that also leads to a very strong awareness of the choices you're making — because if you make the wrong choice, you might not be able to continue.
So we go to sets on the basis of decisions we've made early on to suit in a very precise way. And yet, during the shoot, there will always be unpredicted variables, things, problems, unexpected scenarios whereby you've got to make a different choice to what you were expecting in the moment.
So you can plan as much as you want, but it's only when it comes to executing the work that you realise 'if I can't shoot, if I can't do that as planned, how can I proceed?'. And limitations really force you to find new paths forward."
On Directing a Feature When You're Not Able to Be On Set
"I started shooting and making films and 35mms during the analogue periods, when you didn't know what you'd see, really — what you were filming until later when it was developed in in a lab. And so you had a general impression and general image, but you didn't have a precise image or impression.
And then later on, the video assist was introduced, where you could sort of control the set and watch the monitor at the same time — which became very fascinating for me and for lots of other filmmakers, because we were able to focus on the monitor.
And in a way, [that's how] we made this film — we had a monitor that I had access to online while directing remotely. And then I had a secure sound connection to the set, mediated by a number of assistants.
Of course, it was very slow. There were interruptions. There were moments when the connection was lost, and so I'd lose the control of the set for various minutes and then we had to reestablish it — so it was very laborious and difficult. But what mattered the most was that I was able to maintain, the priority was for me to maintain my concentration, but also to make do with the slowness and the inevitable delays.
Wherever possible, of course, I would come as close as possible to set or actually appeared a few times, and that was much more fun and much better."
On the Approach to Casting — and to Building an On-Screen Family — When You're Making a Movie in Secret
"It's always difficult to compose a family in any film, because the members of the family have to look similar in a convincing way to the audience.
So of course, if you're making a film underground, it becomes much more difficult to compose a believable family, because you're choosing from a much smaller pool of actors.
But we spent a lot of time on this with my close collaborators, examining all the possibilities. And once we selected the father and the younger daughter, we then managed to find the mother and the older daughter.
But yes, it was very difficult. It was extremely time-consuming. But I think in the end we were very successful."
On How Having to Work in Secret, and the Energy That Goes Into It, Impacts a Finished Film
"Well, when you're working with this kind of pressure, you always do have this feeling that you may manage to escape the system, and to ignore it and to defy it, but it doesn't mean you're escaping limitations. You're simply working with a different set of limitations.
What is paramount to me is that the audience, when it watches the film, should not feel that the film was made with this sort of limitation.
Of course, there are lots of aspects that I would have liked to play more with under different circumstances, but let's say the priority is really for the audience to feel that they're watching something that wasn't shot under this kind of duress."
The Seed of the Sacred Fig opened in Australian cinemas on Thursday, February 27, 2025.