Content warning: This article discusses misogyny, physical and systemic violence, and descriptions of murder. 

In 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in police custody while visiting Tehran with her family. She was stopped by the ‘morality police’ for allegedly not complying with Iran’s mandatory hijab regulations. Her death sparked widespread protests in demand for the abolition of the morality police, the removal of hijab regulations, and the ousting of the theocratic regime. Students at U of T also held protests in solidarity with the protesters in Iran. 

This is the reality that Mohammad Rasoulof, director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig, is deeply invested in. An Iranian exile, Rasoulof was sentenced to prison for filming without a permit, among other things and has since fled to Europe. The film’s production was fraught with challenges as the Iranian government pressured the cast and crew to withdraw from the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where the film premiered. 

The film tells the story of Iman — an investigator in the Tehran Revolutionary Court — and the women in his family. Iman’s wife, Najmeh, is devout and nurturing, striving to keep her family together despite her two daughters’ engagements with the political turmoil in their home country. Sana (Setareh Maleki), the younger sister, is emotionally driven and idealizes her father as a principled man. Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami), the older sister, is more politically astute and committed to justice, even when it puts her at odds with her more conservative parents, especially her father. 

Every shot in the film is profoundly intimate, focusing primarily on the family home. We watch Najmeh and her daughters cook dinner, eat, and wash dishes together. The dinner scenes in particular are consistently shot at eye level, allowing us to engage in their conversations about political, social, and emotional issues — issues that they too are working through. This approach makes us feel as though we are at the table, intimately involved in their lives. 

The camera often shows the family from behind, immersing viewers in the tension, paranoia, and sadness experienced by the family members. The depictions of family life and the complex relationships between women are realistic: the side-eye glances of the mother when she catches her daughters in a lie and the shy guilt the daughters display when they admit to hiding Sadaf — a politically active friend of Rezvan — in their bedroom are portrayed with striking authenticity.

One scene that particularly stood out was after Sadaf was shot during a student protest at her university. Sadaf’s face is marred by shrapnel, her eye bloody and bruised.The same tweezers that Najmeh used to pluck her daughters’ eyebrows are now used to remove ball bearings from Sadaf’s eye. The daughters’ bedroom — which once was bathed in white light and cool tones as the four women huddled together, scrolling online and painting their nails — is now cast in a sickly yellow lighting. Hazy camerawork draws the audience into the scene, while the close-ups of the actresses’ faces reveal the depth of their sorrow.

The film’s main theme revolves around the paranoia that stems from being part of a theocratic regime like Iran’s. Earlier in the film, Iman asserts that he has absolute trust in his wife. Yet later on, the disappearance of a gun that Iman’s job issued to him triggers his suspicion, leading him to accuse his wife and daughters of the theft. His job — the overwhelming criminal cases that begin to consume him — raises doubt in his mind, leading him to view his family as though they were the criminals he prosecutes.

As Iman’s paranoia reaches a crescendo, the torture he inflicts upon his family — physical abuse, humiliation, and imprisonment — mirrors the punishment Iran’s justice system inflicts on its people. Iman’s complicity in a system that inflicts such degrading harm inevitably brings this cruelty into his personal life. When a system is designed to make everyone a criminal, it’s only a matter of time before everyone is deemed guilty of a crime.