Finally, I get to see a film at this year’s Sydney Film Festival that contains real depth, urgency and socio-political commentary.

Iman (Missagh Zare) is an investigator who works for the government and struggles with the seemingly arbritrary death warrants he is required to sign, his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) is fully supportive of him as she is looking after her two daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki) who have begun to question the theocratic regime that seems to be indiscriminately attacking students. When Iman’s government issued gun goes missing he begins to suspect his family leading to a showdown that is both allegorical, tense and threatens to rip them apart.

Directed by Iranian director, Mohammad Rasoulof, who has recently been convicted for dissidence, speaking out against the government and was sentenced to 8 years and a flogging.
(A flogging!!!!!! it’s 2024, not AD24).

He managed to escape from Iran via an extreme and gruelling journey to travel to Germany and managed to attend the Canned Film Festival where his film was nominated for a Palme D’Or and was awarded a Special Jury Prize.

The film was previously smuggled out of Iran and edited by Andrew Bird, who had worked with Rasoulof before and he added in real life footage found from social media of the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ protests in Iran that erupted after the death of Masha Amini in 2022.
The instagram footage brings it all to the forefront and is an incredibly powerful addition to the narrative.

Missagh Zare as Iman and Soheila Golestani as Najmeh in The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Like his contemporary Jafar Panahi, whose film ‘This is Not a Film’ was also smuggled out of Iran, Rasoulof is making films against ALL the odds, a theocratic government who have little sympathy for the artist or, indeed the truth.
It’s God’s way or the highway according to the current government and this usually leads to execution.

Interrogation in The Seed of the Sacred Fig

This is why film, and art in general is so so important, nay imperative.

The world is changing and in the last 20 odd years with the proliferation of social media and the WORLD wide web, people’s stories are finally being heard.
This needs to be recorded and thanks to incredibly brave director’s like Rasoulof, they are. 

These are the true heroes.
Art as resistance. Art as a means to change.