The Seed of the Sacred Fig

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is an intimate but powerful family drama. In the first part, we gradually get to know all the members of the family. How social events in the country affect them, but also the more personal changes brought about by the father's job promotion, which means the family is more careful, vigilant and deliberate about who they associate with, who they say what to, etc. The family seems to be living a quiet life until the day they have to treat a friend of one of their daughters who has been seriously injured while attending a demonstration. This sparks the first rift between mother and daughters, but everything is kept from the father, who is rather absent in the first part of the film. In the second part we follow the hunt for the truth about the missing service weapon. Slowly the character of the father is revealed as he suspects his daughters and slips into the interrogation practices he has adopted from his work. In the finale, it then feels a bit like a kind of Iranian version of The Shining. This transition could have been a great idea, but unfortunately it didn't really work for me because the characters stopped behaving logically. I don't understand why everyone involved let it go so far, their actions didn't seem rational at all, on the contrary it was completely unnecessarily escalated. If they had shortened the first part and given more space for us to get to know the father figure more deeply, maybe everything would have made a lot more sense. But at the same time, the first part of the film is much more interesting because it holds up a mirror to society. It reveals the differences between the older, more conservative generation, for whom God is the law, and the younger generation, who yearn for more freedom, a more meaningful system and justice. Had this been the main theme of the film, I think it would have had a much greater and stronger impact. [Festival de Cannes 2024] (25.05.2024)