‘Seed of the Sacred Fig’ power and protest

The backstory of Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s harrowing life could be a movie of its own. He’s been arrested and censured by the government multiple times for his previous films, but in spite of that, Rasoulof secretly made “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” a decision that forced the director to flee his native country. “When the Women, Life, Freedom revolt broke out, there was a sudden influx of new prisoners, and I happened to be in the group of people who were pardoned,” he tells The Envelope through an interpreter. “When I was out, I asked myself, ‘How can I actually touch what has been going on in the streets?’ so I looked for all the videos that documented how the protesters had been oppressed by the system.” The result is a powerful and poignant allegory, dense in metaphorical imagery, about the state and its people. Rasoulof suggests the climactic frame here symbolizes “the burial of a power that will never die.” “It also represents the ideas, the thoughts and the beliefs of a minority in Iran who have submitted themselves to the regime. Submitted themselves to a form of power based on an ideological belief that, in my view, is really not ideology.”