Germany, France, Iran • d: Mohammad Rasoulof • R • 2h 48m
Iman (Missag Zare) has just been promoted to Investigator, a stepping stone to the prestigious and lucrative position of Judge in Iran. But there’s a catch: He’s now expected to blindly follow the dictates of the authoritarian Iranian government. When his wife (Soheila Golestani) and two daughters (Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki) show some sympathy for protesters demanding human rights on the streets of Tehran, he begins to harden in defense of an unjust system. Writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof, himself a former prisoner of conscience, was forced to flee his homeland after authorities learned about the subject matter of his film. With his four brilliant actors, he shows, with meticulous clarity, compassion, and poignance, how totalitarian rule can erode even the bonds between parent and child, husband and wife. Agonizingly painful, yet thrilling in its moral clarity, The Seed of the Sacred Fig (a winner at Cannes) provides one of cinema’s most emphatic statements of the necessity of freedom.
About the Telluride Film Festival
The Telluride Film Festival has been, for the last 50 years, a celebration of the art of film: honoring the great masters of the cinema, discovering the rare and unknown, bringing new works by the world’s greatest directors and the latest in American independent film to a small mountain town in Colorado. The New York Times called Telluride “the smallest, most original, and most stimulating of the major festivals,” while Entertainment Tonight simply said it was “the world’s best festival.”
About Telluride By The Sea
The Music Hall and the Telluride Film Festival collaborate on an exclusive presentation of six new features, brought directly from their Colorado debuts. This unique and intimate Portsmouth event treats audience members from across the Northeast to an exclusive peek into the Telluride experience—packing one September weekend in Portsmouth with the latest international cinema, private parties, great music, delicious food, and inspired conversations with other cinephiles of all ages, tastes, and backgrounds.
Schedule
Fri., 9/13 • 7pm • Conclave
Sat., 9/14 • 1pm • Memoir of a Snail
Sat., 9/14 • 3:30pm • Nickel Boys
Sat., 9/14 • 7:30pm • Saturday Night
Sun., 9/15 • 12pm • The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Sun., 9/15 • 4pm • Will & Harper
Sun., 9/15 • 7:30pm • Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
