The Seed of the Sacred FIg | TIFF 2024 | Review by: Gal Balaban
This utterly startling and breathtaking film was literally a crime to be made in its own country, which adds to the incredible and urgent nature of watching it. It focuses on a family torn by accusations and conflicted beliefs on the country they live in and its future. That country of course being Iran, one of the most ruthless, sadistic, and barbaric regmies of the modern world. It’s a world we as viewers living in a nation with far more freedoms would hardly recognize: the leaders of the regime are everywhere in cutouts in a Big Brother-like fashion, and mistakes or free speech are not allowed, neither is female autonomy.
The film brilliantly combines the real and the fiction; it’s not directly a true story, but at the same time, it’s happening right now -- it happened yesterday, today, and will happen again tomorrow. It seamlessly weaves the murder of Mahsa Amini by Iranian authorities into the story, as well as actual footage from social media of Iranian authorities brutally beating protestors on the streets of Tehran. For this reason, it is incredibly disturbing and difficult to watch, yet a part of you, as an audience member, knows that the director, with all his heart, is begging you not to look away. Not because we have no choice, rather because we do. Because the truth that has been supressed and itching to break out for so long is now exploding in front of our eyes.
The actors are all incredible, particularly Soheila Golestani as the family’s matriarch, who enters an internal dialogue between the values of her regime, her husband, and her growingly conscious daughters. Despite its 166-minute runtime, not a single scene is out of place, and the final act will have you gasping for air and at a loss for words. The symbolism is beautifully coated but evident. The titular “seed of the sacred fig” is what the film is all about: absolute faith. Faith without question is a destructive and consuming force that destroys everything, even those who believe in it. And its the dangerous value that the nation in the film is built on and will murder for. The Seed of the Sacred Fig not only works as a gut-wrenching film about its central family, but also as a love letter to the courageous women living under the Iranian Regime, as a call to watch, listen, and act. It’s one of the harshest and most imminent films in recent memory, that feels like it’s lighting the spark for revolution through art.
4.5/5
Review by: Gal Balaban
