Iranian cinema shows a special ability to create miracles out of nothing at world festivals. Leading directors shoot in dire conditions, often on the edge of the law, constrained by ideological limits. And that leads to great ingenuity. Mohammad Rasúlof, who was sentenced to eight years in prison just before this year’s Cannes festival, secretly filmed his film The Seed of the Sacred Fig Tree.
In the end, it became one of the most touching moments of the French show when Rasúlof appeared at the premiere of his new product. Its introduction was announced by the organizers at the last minute, the Iranian authorities put hard pressure on the producers and dramaturgs to prevent the film from being included in the program.
It was not the first time that Mohammad Rasúlof became the object of the regime’s interest. Already in 2010, he received a six-year sentence, although it was later shortened by a year. And further penalties for alleged anti-systemic activity followed. After the last judgment was handed down this spring, the director emigrated, and today he lives in exile in Germany.
Similar stories abound in Iran. For example, the director Jafar Panahi shot his Taxi Tehran, which had its world premiere at the Berlin festival nine years ago, secretly disguised as a taxi driver and the film took place purely in a taxi service vehicle. Like Rasúlof, he was banned from filming because of his “propagandist anti-regime work”. And just like him, he has already smuggled several films out of the country to the world’s biggest festivals.
The seed of the sacred fig tree, as Rasúlof’s new product is called, follows the Iranian tradition of the ability to create a cozy but bewitching drama inside a car or in the cramped conditions of an apartment. This time, however, the director seems to want to criticize the regime too openly. Although the film is strong and important, it does not unfold with the ease of the masterpieces of local cinematography.
In the center is the father of the family, Iman, who after twenty years of service to his country gets the desired promotion and becomes a state investigator, which is just a step away from the position of judge.
But from the first moments, instead of joy, this event is accompanied by fears, disillusionment and tremors of paranoia. The protagonist finds himself under the microscope of his colleagues, who do not always like him. He is tasked with sending people to jail with a simple rubber stamp without examining the evidence. At the same time, in Iran, women are protesting for their rights, for which they face years in prison. And at home, his wife and two teenage daughters are waiting for Iman, who have their own, much more open view of the functioning of the Islamic Republic.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig Tree begins as a family and psychological drama. He follows a strangely insecure man defending the regime, who at the same time is more worried about him than fighting for his interests would bring him anything other than financial satisfaction. He has to carry a gun, he is afraid that he is not safe, he should hide what he is really doing from his relatives. So, for example, one day the wife finds a firearm in the bathroom in the middle of a pile of dirty laundry.
Daughters live a modern life, they want to move on social networks, paint their nails, take selfies. And most of all, they don’t want to face constant persecution for almost anything they do as women.
Mohammad Rasúlof can create moments of tension at the family table, but it seems that his hands are tied a little that the regime is embodied directly by the head of the family this time.
The greatest Iranian filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Machmalbáf and later Asghar Farhádí were usually able to elegantly hide any political agenda, if it was already fleetingly present, in everyday dramas, poetic, permeated with a kind of rural lyricism, often seen through children’s eyes.
The film Seed of the Sacred Fig Tree has been showing in Czech cinemas since last Thursday. | Video: Film Europe
Rasúlof already represents a slightly more realistic current of Iranian art. Instead of Farhádí’s social and family sketch, he presents a sharply critical political stance, which in places takes away from his finesse.
But he has power as a papyrus of accumulated anger over the theocracy’s actions. Also because the original, rather intimate drama takes on thriller features in the last third, and the family members are not only fighting for mutual relationships, but for their bare lives.
The film is most convincing, however, in the more ordinary moments, when the father, who previously professed a more liberal view of the world, talks about an external enemy at dinner, and it is difficult to distinguish to what extent he is playing his role and to what extent he is a convinced victim of propaganda, conspiracy or paranoia.
In such moments, when, for example, girls have to beg their mothers to be able to secretly house a classmate for a while without their father’s knowledge, because he is not supposed to associate with any “strangers” in his position, the news shows the paradoxes of the lived reality under the pressure of the regime.
At the end, when the creators leave Tehran together with the heroes and start a complicated chase in the middle of dilapidated buildings, the scattered nervous camera capturing the individual figures in motion seems somewhat artificial. And the need to end everything with a strong, symbolic gesture gives the impression of a not entirely happy return to the earlier poetics of Iranian cinema.
Many engaged filmmakers have already raised their fists more convulsively than Mohammad Rasúlof. Even so, his news sounds like a valuable, but uneven ticket to the surely troubled Iranian reality. Although it is quite understandable why he received a special jury prize for it in Cannes.
Film
The seed of the sacred fig tree
Directed by: Mohammad Rasúlof
Film Europe, Czech premiere on October 10.