As the opening quote in the film "The Seed of the Holy Fig" describes, this tree spreads its seeds into the branches of neighboring trees. It knocks them to the ground and slowly chokes the life out of the host, thus making it quite clear that misogyny and theocracy also choke freedom, thought and self. life, tearing down and causing destruction at every turn.
This film, which was shown as part of the film program of the Bar Chronicle, received a twelve-minute standing ovation at its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Its director, Mohamad Rasulof, appeared at the screening after fleeing Iran to Europe to avoid going to prison. The Iranian authorities sentenced him to eight years in prison, because he made a film criticizing the regime, so his very appearance carried a strong message.
"Sacred Fig Seed" is a film made underground in Iran with a small budget. He talks about the period of "Women, Life, Freedom" protests that shook the country in 2022/23. The director has already served two sentences in Iranian prisons, even in solitary confinement. He was convicted of filming without a license in 2010 and again in 2020 for his film "Man of Integrity", which Iranian authorities said constituted "gathering and collusion against national security and propaganda against the system".
"Tolerating work bans, bans on leaving the country, interrogations, harsh conditions for filming films underground, going to prison... all these pressures were part of a long journey. The prison provided an opportunity to think about all this. After my release, I knew that I would soon receive a new sentence from the court and that I would have to go back to prison. However, before the verdict, with a bold decision, I started recording 'The Seed of the Holy Fig'. Halfway through filming, the verdict was announced, and just a few days after we finished filming, I found out about the final decision - an eight-year prison sentence by the Court of Appeal," said Rasulof in one of his interviews.
There are many motifs that can be interpreted as a theme running through "The Seed of the Holy Fig". It is about a family consisting of father Iman, mother Najma and two daughters Sana and Rezvan. Iman has been working for the government for twenty years. Now he has been promoted and has become an investigator, which is why he and his family are getting used to a new life with a lot of restrictions. It's just that he is asked not to think too much and to sign what he "needs" to sign. He does what he "must". So there's no accountability, right? He is not an executioner. Someone else above him did. Although the reflection in the mirror does not agree with him at the moment when he puts on a coat with a hood in the bathroom and in the dark shadow takes on the appearance of an executioner.
It is also about a time that as such covers every segment and unit of society, but also about history, because the entire history as such is male, and this is just a continuation. Because many want to use it as an argument for their privilege.
As "Seed of the Holy Fig" shows in Iran, those who protest are sentenced to death, torture... only it's not just a movie - it's reality. Mahsa Amini was killed, because she allegedly violated the rules that require women to wear hijab, as prescribed by the theocracy holders, as shown in the film. By the way, there are also reports of terrible and unimaginable things that happen to those who dare to show any expression of revolt.
"Sacred Fig Seed" combines reality and fiction in the literal sense, gaining a documentary moment. Even the format changes when the two sisters watch Instagram photos take their shape and we become the ones who watch police brutality in disbelief, people who are left to die in the street in a pool of their own blood. These are the same recordings that we could have seen on social networks during the protest, and some of them we could have recognized in the film if we had come across them beforehand.
Iranian girls are forced to wear the hijab - because far from going out "bareheaded" (where that term is used pejoratively, of course) - to dress as prescribed, to behave as expected, to ask their father if they can paint their nails, paint themselves , and if they pluck their eyebrows so that they are thin, then they are cu*ves (an expression that does not exist in the masculine gender, because apparently only women can be that)... and all this causes disbelief and anger. Maybe someone will think "what a hindsight", but let's reexamine ourselves before we think such a thing. Well, in Montenegro, when women come out to protest and say what they think, they are degraded. An example is the last March 8 march with the slogan "It's time for justice". The comments were full of hate, sexism and misogyny. I wonder how this is possible? Don't these people see what I see? They see. They know how many women are killed, how many women are victims of femicide. They know what judgments are like. The attitude towards all that is also obvious. Even when someone rebels against such an obvious injustice.
Najme, as the film progresses, manages to notice, unlike Iman, that maybe not everything is as she thought. Maybe TV isn't telling the truth after all. Perhaps the blood on her hands, which she was cleaning from the face of Sadaf, her daughters' friend, still speaks more than the offensive words of propaganda. That scene in which the light of day shines brightly on Sadaf's face while Najme cleans it for her, while removing pieces from her disfigured face, shows that a woman is not a wolf to a woman. It shows how we help each other unlearn harmful patterns. As he washes the blood from his hands that goes down the drain, the blood never goes away. It always remains a reminder. And again in that bathroom to the bearer of guilt. Until Iman is bathed in water, it is not purified.
Perhaps the disappearance of the same Sadaf who did nothing wrong says more. Perhaps the feeling of living under rules, which even the God in whom they believe did not prescribe, speaks more, although the government likes to consider itself chosen by God and omniscient - that's how it still wants to preserve its power. "Why are you sure that it is God's law," asks one of the daughters.
Najme is a character that shows that as a woman, even if you are part of the system with your attitudes, you are still a woman and you are still oppressed. You still remain in danger.
The characters in the film are not shown as extremes, because such is human reality. Iman is indecisive at first, but as time passes and the more he is in the system, a job that prescribes punishments and death sentences for those whose ages range from 14 to 70 years old, he is further and further away from everything that is moral and everything he becomes more of an oppressor, saying words like: "Bastards" and "we'll get rid of them", although while in the car the bright red color seems to burn his face with guilt.
Dark rooms, eavesdropping, following orders, blood on hands, disbelief in one's own family, interrogations, total culmination of paranoia and collapse of reason through violence against women and daughters - this is theocracy and misogyny. A dull ache in the stomach, discomfort, anxiety, corneredness, helplessness, lack of control, these are all feelings that pervade while watching the film.
In the scene where Najme, Rezvan and Sana are running away from Iman, at one point Rezvan looks in the dark through a hole of light that falls on her face while the dust becomes visible. That scene seems to depict captivity and a view of life as it could be. That's hope. That's courage. This is the question and answer of one of the daughters who says "When will I live for myself?".
Bonus video:
