There are films that are not only about what they show, but also about what they make you feel. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) is one of those. On the surface, it's a family drama about a police officer who, while signing death sentences, watches his home turn into a minefield of distrust. But, at its core, it's a meticulous study of how a regime not only governs a country but infiltrates the most intimate relationships, colonizing blood ties and transforming the home into an inquisitorial court.
Divided into two distinct parts, the film first presents us with this seemingly functional Iranian family: a rational father, but submissive to the system; a mother who is the perfect mold of devotion and submission expected of her; and two daughters who still preserve some individuality but are crushed by the invisible weight of the rules that govern their lives. The great irony is that, even without constant physical imposition, oppression is present, shown through real-life videos that punctuate the narrative, in news of brutality, in whispered conversations. The camera moves through the corridors of the house as if searching for cracks in the veneer of this tense normality, and the soundtrack reinforces the feeling that, at any moment, something will break.
And it does. When the father's weapon disappears, the film transitions from social drama to a suffocating psychological thriller. The house becomes a stage for paranoia, and distrust turns every relationship into a silent tug-of-war. The father, unable to conceive that the problem might lie within himself, instills in the home the same kind of oppression he helped sustain outside. There is something cruel and fascinating in this reversal: while he follows the protocol of his public function, believing himself to be in control, his family disintegrates before him.
If there is something the film could explore more deeply, it might be a more direct moment of confrontation, a verbalization of the daughters' motivations-especially the youngest, whose decision to hide the weapon triggers all the chaos. The narrative gives us enough hints to understand her silent revolt, and it makes sense for a film like this to opt for subtlety over exposure. However, as a viewer, there is an inevitable desire for a more explosive dialogue, something that would spell out what is already between the lines. At the same time, it's precisely this lack of definitive answers that maintains the impact of the film because the truth is that, under a regime like that, no family survives intact.
