The story of an Oscar nomination

What makes a film German? Is it the actors or the director? Where it was shot or if the dialogue is in German? In the case of "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" (original title: Dane-ye Anjir-e Ma’abed) by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, it's the fact that it was financed by a German funding body and that it has a German co-producer, Mani Tilgner. The actors are all Iranian, the film was shot in secret in Iran and the dialogue is in Farsi.  

Although there is no apparent link to Germany, the film is now Germany's hope for the 2025 Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category. After winning several awards at film festivals like Cannes and San Sebastián, "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" has a good chance of beating "Emilia Pérez" (France), "I'm Still Here" (Brazil), "The Girl with the Needle" (Denmark) and "Flow" (Latvia) to win Germany its next Oscar.   

A judge and his rebellious daughters

Mohammad Rasoulof’s drama revolves around Iman (Missagh Zareh), a devout lawyer from Tehran who was recently promoted to the role of investigating judge. A higher salary follows and he moves into a larger apartment with his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) and two daughters Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sara (Setareh Maleki).  

Mohammad Rasoulof's drama revolves around Iman (Missagh Zareh), a devout lawyer from Tehran who was recently promoted to the role of investigating judge. A higher salary follows, and he is able to move into a larger apartment with his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) and two daughters Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sara (Setareh Maleki).  

As well as the new apartment, Iman also receives a service weapon for his security. One day, the gun goes missing and Najmeh, Rezvan and Sara are the prime suspects. All three women deny any involvement. To find out who stole the gun, Iman takes his wife and daughters to court and has them separately questioned in dark cells by one of his colleagues. These scenes are grim and claustrophobic—the women are blindfolded and aggressively interrogated. Witnessing the harsh treatment that Iman's family is subject to, one can only wonder how people are treated when they don't have a personal connection to a high-ranking judge.  

All of this takes place against the backdrop of the real-life protests that erupted throughout the country after the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini at the hands of the country’s "morality police" in late 2022. Both Rezvan and Sara have friends who participate in these protests, such as Sadat (Niousha Akashi), who is shot in the face during one protest and arrested shortly afterwards in another.  

All this culminates in a climactic moral showdown around Iman's dinner table, with the parents are on one side of the debate and the children on the other. Iman and Najmeh blame the escalating violence on the protesters, parroting state media. Rezvan and Sara, who are following the events online, can see right through the propaganda.  

Iman is no passive spectator, he plays an active role due to his job, sentencing people to death without knowing the specifics of each case. He must remain anonymous, so he can protect himself from possible revenge attacks by family members of those he puts behind bars. Eventually, he is doxxed and his address and photo leaked online. 

Without his service weapon and with two daughters feeling increasingly revolutionary, Iman no longer feels safe in his home. He decides to leave Tehran and travel with Najmeh, Rezvan and Sara to the mountains. Once the family arrives at their country house, more secrets are revealed and Iman loses control of the entire situation. 

A deserved nomination

It's easy to see why "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" received its Oscar nomination. The film strikes a societal nerve and offers invaluable insights into a repressive regime. Its social critique operates on two levels: on the one hand by showing the protests after Jina Mahsa Amini's death and the violent reaction to them, and on the other hand by bringing these events into the intimate and domestic lives of the characters.  

It's clear that Iman represents the state and his daughters the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, advocating for their right to self-determination, standing for the liberation from patriarchy and the Iranian hijab law. At first glance, this may seem a little unsophisticated and on the nose, but Rasoulof employs this symoblism skilfully to develop his narrative.  

The title, as explained at the beginning of the film, is a reference to a particular kind of plant that wraps itself around other trees and suffocates them. Its seed could be understood as a two-sided metaphor: a seed of hope for a new beginning, or of the suffocating regime itself.  

The director’s own life story lends the film even more weight. In 2017, Iran confiscated Mohammad Rasoulof's passport and he has faced serious obstacles to making films ever since. He as not been able to accept awards at international film festivals in person, for example when his film "There is no Evil" won the Golden Bear at Berlinale in 2020. 

When it was announced that "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" would premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Rasoulof was handed another eight years in prison in Iran. He decided to flee the country, describing the journey as "exhausting and extremely dangerous" in an interview with the Guardian. He fled on foot through the mountains for six weeks and in May 2024 was able to present "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" personally in Cannes. Today he lives in exile in Germany.  

Fitting a Western narrative of Iran

It's impossible to ignore that the film's positive reception has also got something to do with how Iran is perceived by the West. Notably, former US president Barack Obama selected it as one of his favourite films of the year. In Germany, the director and his film have been warmly welcomed.  

"The Seed of the Sacred Fig" being Germany's Oscar entry doesn't sit right with everyone. Journalist Rüdiger Suchsland called the decision "a small scandal and a big slap in the face of all German filmmakers and producers", claiming that homegrown German filmmakers lack the kind of support Rasoulof receives. 

This may be a little overdramatic. Whether the film is submitted to the Oscars by Germany, France or South Africa should be of no great importance. What is far more important is something that no one seems to be talking about: at no point in Rasoulof's film is it explicitly mentioned that Jina Mahsa Amini was Kurdish, and that the political slogan Jin, Jinan, Azadî (Woman, Life, Freedom) has its origins in the Kurdish liberation struggle.  

Jina Mahsa Amini was not just a woman, but a Kurdish woman

Kurdish journalist Sham Jeff raises this criticism in an interview with Qantara: "The Jina revolution in Iran is not only a feminist revolution, it’s not only about the removal of the hijab. It's a systemic, intersectional movement which includes many marginalised groups. Reducing the film to a feminist-only narrative plays into a Western perspective."

Whether this was done on purpose by the director is irrelevant to its effect. Jaff elaborates, that this is "exactly what Kurds feared would happen: everyone forgetting that Jina was Kurdish, that the protests started in Kurdish provinces. The film even shows cellphone videos from Kurdish provinces, but the context isn't mentioned at all. One could say that the film missed an opportunity in this instance."

To read this film as a feminist intervention is not wrong in itself. But the criticism stands, that the full identity of the person who sparked the protests in 2022 is omitted from the film, which raises an interesting question: would this film have been Germany's Oscar entry, if it were primarily focused on the Kurdish perspective? For Jaff, it's clear that were this the case, "this story would have been seen as something of an inner-Iranian issue, and therefore less interesting to the West."

Translated from German by Schayan Riaz.