Way of the Gun: Rasoulof’s Bold, Blunt Indictment of Iranian Regime

There’s been little opportunity for artists to clearly or critically speak truth to power in post-revolutionary Iran, where filmmakers and actors are often censored through brute force. Anything considered as propaganda against the state can irreparably affect one’s career, which is why Iranian cinema, like a lot of films made by artists suppressed by political terror, often moves in the realm of metaphor, where intentions and themes are coded. Until now. With his tenth feature film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Mohammad Rasoulof launches what constitutes an artistic missile into this supposedly omnipotent dominion, and seems to have drop kicked the hornet’s nest.…...