What Filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof Endured for “The Seed Of The Sacred Fig"

The international film landscape is essential in shaping a global approach to cinema. Oftentimes, it isn’t simply the types of stories or the way they are told by specific voices that excite audiences, but also the way in which they were made.

Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed Of The Sacred Fig is astonishing in its raw truthfulness, but also that every day of clandestine filmmaking process presented another opportunity for the filmmaker’s arrest. Set in Tehran, Seed tells a chilling story of Iman (Missagh Zareh), an investigating judge who is promised money, safety, and security in his new role. The catch is that his job is to tailor his investigations to pre-ordained outcomes regardless of the judiciary process.

Iman soon realizes the perks of his promotion lead to anxiety and paranoia which eventually push him to turn on his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) and daughters Sana (Setareh Malek) and Reagan (Mahsa Rostami).

The Iranian people were pushed to the brink of government intervention in their lives and engaged in violent revolution in 1979 with some unintended consequences. Religious zealots were split between their reading of ruling Islamic doctrines which led to bloodied violence and death as the line between religion and government institutions vanished. “There are strange accounts of fanaticism and insistence on ideology that perverts infanticide, fratricide, seeking martyrdom, etc. into quasi-religious values,” notes Rasoulof.

People were forced to choose either loyalty to the state or loyalty to their families.

Rasoulof was a political prisoner in 2022 around the time of the Jina Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. He was deeply moved by the courage and boldness of the moment at a time when social change and rapid upheaval was (and still is) considered dangerous. Interestingly, this wasn’t the key driver of The Seed Of The Sacred Fig for Rasoulof.

“I think it all began with a senior staff member of Evin Prison, and it stayed with me. One day, in the middle of the widespread repression during the Jina movement, while this person was visiting the cells of political prisoners, he pulled me aside and said he wanted to hang himself in front of the prison entrance. He suffered from an intense pang of conscience, but he did not have the courage to free himself from the hatred he had for his job,” recalls the filmmaker.

Repression is temporary, but will eventually crumble under the avalanche of the will of the people. Repression includes censorship and a halt of artistic expression including filmmaking.

A stint in prison was far from a deterrent for Rasoulof. He resolved to make his next film about repression, paranoia, and anxiety in secret with a crew who understood the risks. They persisted knowing that the government can’t control everything. It can only stay in power by intimidation and harm against its own people rather than through policies that benefit it.

The filmmaker’s struggles against his homeland didn’t end when the cameras stopped rolling. Everyone involved with The Seed Of The Sacred Fig who didn’t manage to flee Iran, was interrogated by authorities or banned from leaving the country. Equipment was confiscated in an attempt to silence their voices. Mohammad Rasoulof claimed asylum in Germany where he completed his film.

“I tried to achieve a cinematic narrative that is far from the narrative dominated by the censorship in the Islamic Republic, and closer to its reality. I have no doubt that restricting and suppressing freedom of expression cannot be justified even if it becomes a spur for creativity, but when there is no way, a way must be made,”  he insists.

Aside from being ubiquitous in Middle-Eastern cuisine and culture, the fig has a fascinating growth cycle which informs the lyrical metaphor of the film. “Its seeds fall onto the branches of other trees through bird droppings. The seeds then germinate, and their roots move towards the ground. When the roots reach the ground, the sacred fig tree stands on its own feet and its branches strangle the host tree.”

The Seed Of The Sacred Fig should not only be lauded as an act of resolute determination, but also as a stunning example of gritty, real and unsanitized storytelling about a war between a government and its citizens.