I watch some strange shows and movies. I’m reminded of this every time I get into a discussion about what people have been watching lately and I (1) often have no idea about whatever the rest of the group is fixated on at that time and (2) am met with blank stares or slight horizontal shaking of the head as if to say not again. Even in these missives I’ve written in recent months about a few gritty foreign detective shows and an anime series.

Well, this weekend I partook in a foreign film instead of a television show. On the recommendation of one of my law school classmates, I watched The Seed of the Sacred Fig. This was a movie that was nominated for best international film at the Oscars this year and won several other awards on the 2024 circuit. The film was produced in conjunction with French and German organizations, but it is an Iranian movie. I watched it with the original Farsi audio and read subtitles. According to some of the reports about the movie I read while writing this post, footage had to be smuggled out of the Iran as the film is hardly kind towards the regime.

Figs aren’t really a part of my own culture so some of the imagery was lost in translation, but the film takes on themes of struggle, pressure to conform, the desire for freedom, control of information, gender dynamics, and more without ever resorting to beating the audience over the head with the directors’ own beliefs. The director certainly has strong beliefs and doesn’t hide them, which is why the film had to be smuggled out of the country, but the story always stays at the forefront of the film. In terms of plot, the film is set mostly in Tehran and focuses on a single family of four. The two children are young women, one in high school and the other in university. The father gets a promotion in the clerical court system around the same time that a wave of protests roils universities. When one of the girls’ friends is injured by police during a protest, this precipitates the family unraveling in a tragic though not quite predictable manner.

The movie itself has a feel similar to other modern Iranian movies that achieved some success in the West. It is a slow burn and there is a lot of dialogue with stationary cameras. It’s not that there are no action scenes in this one. There are. There just aren’t as many as the visual candy that makes up most contemporary cinema but leaves you empty afterwards. This one ends with an image that sticks.