The now exiled filmmaker Rasoulof skillfully interweaves political activism with the drama of a divided family in the Cannes 2024 Prix Spécial winner. In contemporary Iran, ‘the world has changed’-‘but God hasn't’.

This exchange of words between a concerned woman and a conservative man sums up the exciting The Seed of the Sacred Fig well. The first half seems straight out of the news: family members struggle with the social unrest caused by human rights violations against women in recent years. Teenage daughters Rezvan and Sana are shocked by the uncertain fate of their friend Sadaf, who was injured and captured during a street demonstration. Meanwhile, their father, Iman, is appointed investigating judge, and pressurised to hastily sentence arrested protesters. The second half of the film is a contemporary thriller in which the paranoid Iman turns increasingly fierce against his wife and children.

Filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof fled Iran to escape an eight-year prison sentence because of this film. Rasoulof outlines how the everyday rituals of life in Iran turn nightmarishly into the oppression of a family divided by religious and political beliefs and by a state apparatus that knows how to distort people's hearts and minds.