The Seed of the Sacred Fig (in-person & online)

Soheila Golestani, Missagh Zareh, Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki

Iranian director Mahamed Rasoulof (Manuscripts Don’t Burn, There Is No Evil) delivers this confronting drama that speaks to the dividing lines in Iranian society. Iman (Missagh Zareh) is a judge who sees the benefits for his family in his career’s rapid advancement. His student daughters (Setareh Malek and Mahsa Rostami) are suspicious of his increasing collaboration with the regime. He is warned not to confide in his wife (played by actor and anti-hijab protester Soheila Golestani) as he is encouraged to wave through death sentences without considering the evidence. Iman’s divided loyalties are exposed when his government-issued handgun goes missing, and suspicion falls on the women in his home. What follows is a supremely dramatic wave of edge-of-the-seat revelations.

Having debuted at Cannes following Rasoulof fleeing Iran in fears for his safety, The Seed of the Sacred Fig lead many critics’ picks for best of the festival. Combining an electrifying generational battle with real-life footage of Iran’s protest movement give the film a lightning-in-a-bottle relevance, hard to capture in fiction or documentary alone. While the film is about the issues that are tearing a nation apart, it never lapses into straw men or didactic characterisation. Instead, this is a mesmerising drama about the real reasons why people accept toxic regimes and the courage it takes to resist them.