“Seeds of the Wild Fig Tree”: Iranian Cinema, Beware of Danger!

Iranian cinema past, present, future. Not so long ago, festivals began to select more and more films from Iran, signed Kiarostami, Jalili, Panahi, Makhmalbaf and a few others. Most of them won awards. And then the country got annoyed. Censorship intervened. The government put filmmakers under house arrest, when it didn’t put them in prison, forbade them from filming, exporting their films, presenting them at festivals, or traveling. As absurd as it was untenable, and we remember, for example, Jafar Panahi’s empty seat, which for a long time symbolically represented his absence from Cannes, Berlin or Venice.

All this is not ancient history. To come this year to present his new film at Cannes, “The Seeds of the Wild Fig Tree”, Mohammad Rasoulof had to clandestinely leave the country and the mullahs’ regime, which sentenced him to eight years in prison, five of which were applicable, for “collusion against national security.” He has not returned since. Not repeating the mistake of the Berlinale, where he received the Golden Bear for “The Devil Does Not Exist” (which denounced the death penalty and illustrated the duty to disobey) without being able to come and collect it. In Cannes, as well as in Locarno a few months later, he was able to express himself freely. At least, so to speak.

Shock wave

Screened on the last day of the Cannes Film Festival, “The Seeds of the Wild Fig Tree” quickly became the favorite for the Palme d’Or, which it ultimately did not win, the jury preferring (and on this point, we agree with them) the incredible “Anora» by Sean Baker. Nevertheless, the shockwave caused by Rasoulof’s film remains intact and we must admit that this is one of the major films of the season.

At the center of this film is Iman, an honest lawyer recently appointed as an investigating judge at the Revolutionary Court of Tehran. But he discovers the other side of a not-so-flattering scene. He is indeed expected to approve death sentences without weighing the evidence and to hide information from his relatives, likely targets for possible pressure on him.

It is in this tormented context, and while outside, national political demonstrations are gaining ground, that Iman gives in to paranoia. And then her pistol, a service weapon supposed to help her protect her family, mysteriously disappears, provoking her distrust of the women in her family. The film then takes off and will never land again.

Because under the cover of a metaphor for the Iranian socio-political context, the film resembles a breathtaking and crazy family thriller. Unless it’s the other way around. Quickly, Iman’s bearings, and ours with them, are shattered. The film becomes both a witness to the profound upheavals of a country while thwarting the usual codes of suspense films.

It shows a family that disintegrates and then implodes, putting back to back all the values ​​that founded it, while filming the revolt of a people behind the scenes. It is the cohabitation of all these degrees of reading, and even of staging, that make “Seeds of the Wild Fig Tree” a great film. Because Rasoulof leads everything head on, without displaying the pretension of solving everything, but by distilling information and observations until he delivers his truth. Magnificent and essential!

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