The Sacred Fig and the Death of Patriarchy

I watched The Seed of the Sacred Fig by Mohammad Rasoulof at an alternative cinema in old town of Bern. They’re saying it’s up for the Best International Feature at the Oscars, and honestly, I see why.

The story follows Iman, a man who’s spent 21 years serving the regime. He’s just been promoted to interrogator for the Islamic Revolutionary Court. With that comes a shiny new three-bedroom house and a little more financial breathing room. But right when he’s stepping into this new role, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement erupts.

Iman’s got a wife and two daughters—Razhan, 21, and her younger sister, 17. The movie homes in on his relationship with them, especially Razhan. She’s the one who sets things in motion after witnessing her best friend getting injured in the streets. From there, things spiral in unexpected ways, shifting the violence of the regime from out there—on the streets—right into the walls of Iman’s home.

Now, part of his shiny new promotion means he’s got to carry a gun to “protect” himself. That gun quickly turns into a symbol of power. But here’s the kicker: as the Woman, Life, Freedom movement grows, the gun disappears. Just like that. Iman is desperate to get it back, and his search takes him down a dark road, even interrogating his own wife and daughters. But Rasoulof flips the script. The film whispers of a future where that kind of power—the gun, the regime—loses its grip.

What makes this film hit hard is how Rasoulof uses real footage from the protests, threading it into the lives of Iman’s daughters. You feel their fear, their numbness, their quiet resistance. He’s not showing Iman at work, facing his victims in court. Instead, we see the consequences of his job play out at home. His family becomes a mirror—his daughters are now living the lives of the women and girls his courtroom has torn apart.

This could’ve easily been a preachy film, wagging its finger at the audience. But Rasoulof steers clear of that, save for a few lines of dialogue. He’s not here to rage at the regime outright—he’s here to unravel a knot, to lay bare the mechanics of power and resistance, both inside and outside the home.

The film jumps back and forth between the raw, violent reality of the protests and the quieter tensions within Iman’s house. Those protest clips, though—they don’t just exist for shock value. They’re pulled straight from the phones of Iman’s daughters, woven into the narrative, blurring the lines between the outside world and the suffocating walls of their home.

It’s not just a movie; it’s a reflection of today’s Iran. Rasoulof paints a vivid picture of a generation standing up to a brutal regime. He doesn’t romanticize it, and he doesn’t sugarcoat it. This is a generation that’s done with waiting. They’re out there, challenging power in ways that even men like Iman can’t ignore.

The film leaves you with this haunting truth: no matter how tightly the regime tries to hold on, the power it clings to is slipping, bit by bit, into irrelevance.

As I walked out of the cinema with a few friends, I couldn’t stop myself from sharing what the final scene had awakened in me. It struck me with a clarity too piercing to ignore: the struggle of women in my homeland against patriarchy has reached this point—to find redemption, they must confront and dismantle the power of their fathers. The father, and his symbolic death, stand as a powerful reflection of what women in Iran are truly fighting for: the death of patriarchy.

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