By Jason Osiason

It begins quietly. Iman, a judge with the Revolutionary Court, comes home to his wife Najmeh and their daughters Rezvan and Sana. On the surface life moves as usual, but there is a weight pressing down on the household. Conversations trail off, tension hangs in the air, and you feel politics bleeding into the private space long before the family does.

As the story unfolds the cracks widen. A gun goes missing, protests erupt outside, and Iman begins to unravel. What was once a warm if uneasy home turns into a suffocating cage. He interrogates his wife and daughters, forces them to record confessions, and turns suspicion into a weapon. The intimacy of family life collapses and what started as drama becomes a psychological thriller with no exit.

Mohammad Rasoulof directs with clarity and force. He shows how fear imposed from above does not remain on the street or in the courts but enters the living room, the marriage, even the space between parent and child. The house becomes a metaphor for a country consumed by distrust. His images tighten as the story spirals, each room closing in until you feel the walls pressing on your chest.

The final stretch is gripping but also overlong. The tension peaks early, and the repetition dulls its sharpest edges. The conclusion still lands, but not with the full power it reaches for.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is an unsettling work that lingers even with its flaws. It captures the collapse of trust within a family and mirrors the collapse of a society ruled by fear and is undeniably a strong work. [B]