DRAMA; 2hr 48min (Persian with subtitles)
STARRING: Soheila Golestani, Missagh Zareh, Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki
Seeds of doubt: Zareh and Golestani
After 20 years’ service, upstanding lawyer Iman (Zareh) has been promoted to the position of Investigating Judge in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court. His wife Najmeh (Golestani) is thrilled — the job comes with a pay bump and a three-bedroom apartment — while his two daughters, 21-year-old Rezvan (Rostami) and teenage Sana (Maleki), can’t wait to have their own bedrooms.
Alas, there are caveats. The job also comes with a gun for self-protection: given that criminal investigators are prone to opting for the death penalty, they inevitably make enemies. Then, too, judicial standards are not what they could be, as a shaken Iman discovers on day one when he is asked to sign off on a death indictment without having read the case file. Meanwhile, order is crumbling on the streets of Tehran. Anti-government protests over the questionable death of 21-year-old student Mahsa Amini for not wearing a hijab have mushroomed into riots, shown in actual footage by writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof.
As remote as an orbiting planet, a largely absent Iman is useless at home. Inundated by up to 300 riot-related cases a day, he marinates in a misery that Najmeh, solicitous to a fault though she is, can do nothing to prevent. Adding fuel to an escalating fire, Rezvan clashes with her pro-regime father. Then Iman’s gun disappears, a loss for which he could face three years in prison and for which he suspects his wife and/or his daughters.
If hell truly is other people, its lowest depth would have to be a family torn apart by an autocracy. Like the fruit it references in the opening credits that strangles its host tree to survive, Sacred Fig has deadly roots. In an inhuman hotbed of paranoia and dread, everyone is potentially capable of anything. From that damning standpoint, its consequences illustrated with powder keg severity by a radical ensemble cast, there can be no turning back.
