A TELLURIDE BY THE SEA FEATURE
Academy Award nomination for Best International Feature Film
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. Winner of multiple awards at Cannes Film Festival.
If the powerhouse Iranian drama “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” dramatizes the cruel ironies of existence in a theocratic state, the film’s writer-director, Mohammad Rasoulof, is living them. -Washington Post
The emotional reality of living in Iran while holding views that oppose the state, the movie suggests, is anxiety-inducing—almost unfathomably so for those who have never dealt with such restrictions. -The Atlantic
Rasoulof gets terrific performances from all of his cast, but particularly noteworthy is Sohelia Golestani’s work as Najmeh, which captures the woman’s subtle, gradual transition from defender of her husband to an ally of her daughters. -Rogerebert.com
Functions as both a searing domestic drama about a contemporary Iranian family and a broader allegory for the enduring cultural struggle against patriarchy and oppression. -Filmspotting
Rasoulof’s film damns Iran for its fanatical, corrupting, chauvinistic tyranny, all while generating breakneck suspense and, ultimately, resolving its tale with a disaster that contains within it a measure of hopefulness. -The Daily Beast
‘NR’ 167min, Persian w/ English subtitles
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