Interview: Mohammad Rasoulof on Fighting for Freedom with ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’

While dissident filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof sat in an Iranian prison in 2022—his fourth of such stints—the world outside the walls changed. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement started with anger against compulsory hijab rules but quickly became a catchall for a variety of dissatisfactions brewing within Iran. Upon his release, Rasoulof knew he had to respond to the movement’s mobilization of citizens for freedom.

The film that resulted, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, captures the hope for major change and the danger of the status quo. Without resorting to broad archetypes, Rasoulof distills the macro conflicts embroiling Iranian society into the micro unit of a single family. Iman (Missagh Zareh) devotes himself to his judgeship in the Islamic Revolutionary Court to the extent that he’s assigned a handgun for protection. But when the weapon goes missing, his increasing paranoia leads him to suspect the women in his household are behind the disappearance.

Given that Rasoulof sets the action against the backdrop of the protests, Iman’s outspoken teen daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki), catch the most suspicion. But his wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), who struggles with her competing interests of obedience and independence, doesn’t escape his misgivings about conspiring to undermine his authority.

The medium is the message in The Seed of the Sacred Fig. The film’s dependence on interior chamber drama, verité-style exterior shots, and crowdsourced footage from the actual protests are all aesthetic choices driven by the need to make such a work of political courage through clandestine means. It’s easy to feel the threat to which the creative team responds on a physiological level as Iman’s rage continues spiraling to dangerous extents.

I spoke with Rasoulof ahead of The Seed of the Sacred Fig’s stateside release. Our talk covered whether the events depicted in the film reflect a new development in the Iranian people’s battle against religious totalitarianism, why he felt the need to include so much context in story, and where he draws the resolve to keep telling stories in the wake of his multiple imprisonments.

What are the prevailing cultural attitudes toward guns in Iran? From an American perspective, they’re disturbingly commonplace, so I’d be curious to know what a firearm’s presence means in the film’s setting.

Having a weapon in Iran is something very special. It’s not commonplace. In the story, it takes on a specific significance, and it becomes a symbol of power.

How does it compare to tools like the phone or the camera in the film? Those objects also assume the symbolism of power.

Cameras, mobile phones, and social media take on a specific significance in the story, as they do in the country. They turn into what guarantees, basically, the organizing of protests. And in a place like Iran, where they’re so closely monitored and suppressed by the state, [they’re] what enables people to come together.

The opening fable of the sacred fig suggests a process of seedlings rising and strangling their host. How much of what you show in The Seed of the Sacred Fig is just a natural rebellion of younger generations, and how much did the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran represent a unique development?

Woman, Life, Freedom is one ring in a big chain of movements for women’s rights in Iran that [extend] much further. But at the same time, while being a feminist movement prompted of course by the murder of Mahsa Amini, it represents and brings forth requests that go way beyond a feminist agenda and women’s rights solely. It really is a movement that has to do with human rights more generally. Social media and the way its importance and the way it has enabled this movement, whilst being quite novel in itself, does not mean that the movement is new per se. It simply is manifesting itself in new ways.

You joked when you introduced the film at the New York Film Festival by saying if you knew it would play at 8:30 p.m., maybe you’d have made it shorter. But I struggle to think of any areas I’d cut down because all that build-up makes the final act so tense. How did you develop the scope and structure of the film?

Storytelling about a society oppressed by totalitarianism is very complex because so many people within the society have become normalized to the various tools of oppression. When you want to tell such a story for people who are not familiar necessarily with that society and the ways that that specific totalitarianism works, you really have to set the scene to make sure that your audience is familiar with the general atmosphere.

For instance, nowadays in 2024, the extent to which the hair color of a girl or the way she wants to dress can have political significance is quite rare on a world scale. It is not obvious, necessarily. Of course, there are many different kinds of totalitarianism today in the world, but the Islamic Republic’s totalitarianism with its religious element appears quite unique to me, while at the same time having points in common with all other totalitarian forms of power.

I wanted to fit that into the foreground of the story I wanted to tell. I wanted to pay attention also to the conflict between different generations and the way they look at life. Moreover, I wanted to look into how the relationships within a family can reach a breaking point, how fragile they can be, and how open to collapsing they may be within similar circumstances. This was closely related to the psychological dynamics of a family. All this amount of talking explains why I tried to put all this together within a film which therefore accrued a certain running time! [laughs] And I’d like to stress that this really is a story about a family and the inner workings and dynamics of relationships within this family, which have lots of different layers. And through all of these layers, you can get many other significances and meanings.

You’ve said your allegorical style was driven by fear and self-censorship. Does that give you a certain understanding of Najmeh, the mother figure, in the film?

Najmeh’s behavior has psychological roots. She mentions her father, her family, and this feeling of lacking security growing up. That is the primary motive why she is always trying to guarantee the safety of her family. So that is why, at times, we feel that she herself has become an agent within the patriarchal structure that dominates her own family. She represents a very typical kind of Iranian woman and mother. Indeed, I know them very well. I know many of them. She reminds me very much of a certain paternal aunt I had. She was really almost like a tightrope walker, always leaning a bit to this side, leaning a bit to that side, trying in every way to maintain a certain balance and safety, both for herself but also for the family. And in fact, Najmeh changes her ideas and abandons her initial worldview with great difficulty throughout the film.

How did you settle on the tempered triumph of the film’s ending? The women escape the immediate threat, but the way the hand peeks out from the rubble and has the gun next to it suggests the danger isn’t buried forever.

There is an ancient struggle between tradition and modernity, I think. The struggle between a patriarchal structure, and women’s rights has been going on for decades, and perhaps for over 150 years. Obviously, at times, the balance goes more toward the triumph of progress and modernity. And at times, [it goes] more toward the triumph of traditional values. But I think what really strikes me and everyone is this new generation that has taken us all by surprise.

Do you see The Seed of the Sacred Fig as an escalation of your previous explorations of how these totalitarian institutions imprint themselves on people? The idea that a judge like Iman could take his duty so far as to put his family at risk is quite an extreme example of how far a regime can go.

First of all, Iman’s story and character arc are based on true events and acts. As you know, there are many honor killings in Iran, for instance, which are based on tradition. But religion is also part of that tradition. On a deeper level, also, there is a history of killings within families, especially—but not only—at the beginning of the revolution. Fathers having their own children sentenced, brothers doing the same thing to each other, all because of an ideology. This really shows the extent [of impact] that an ideology can have. You feel that the truth is with you, and you [show] how committed you are to an ideology by how much you’ve handed you submit. Whereby you believe that you’re in the right, you’ve got free rein to commit crimes.

It feels like we’re in a time where authoritarianism is ascendant, and the repression of artistic expression like you have faced is only going to become more common. Where do you draw strength to maintain the resilience to keep going?

This morning, I woke up with the news that a political activist who I spent some time together with in jail in Iran has just taken his own life in protest against the current conditions by throwing himself off a bridge in Tehran. I knew him, and he had no mental health or psychological problems. He just wanted freedom. Perhaps just by living in an authoritarian regime, you get used to wanting freedom. Perhaps by living in a free country, you get used to having civil and personal freedoms, and somehow discount their importance as a consequence. I think I derive the sanity, really, from a desire for freedom, but also to preserve my dignity.

Translation by Iante Roach