Interview with “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” Director Mohammad Rasoulof
Written by: Christopher Llewellyn Reed | January 16th, 2025

Iranian Director Mohammad Rasoulof (Evil Does Not Exist) premiered his latest feature, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. I reviewed it out of the Toronto International Film Festival, in September. As he discusses in the press notes, the film almost landed him in prison for 8 years, given its politically fraught subject matter. Fortunately, Rasoulof was able to flee Iran and now resides in Germany. Thanks to the German producers with whom he partnered, The Seed of the Sacred Fig is now his new home’s submission to the 2025 Oscars.
The film tells the story of a family torn apart after the father, Iman (Missagh Zareh), takes on the much-coveted position of a state investigator. The job is more inquisitor and torturer than anything else, and once Iran erupts into protests over the death, in police custody, of a young woman who refused to wear a hijab—which led, in real life, to the “Women, Life, Freedom” marches, from which Rasoulof shows actual footage—Iman’s two daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki), as well as his wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), slowly turn against him. What follows is a harrowing thriller where art and actuality intersect.
The film is out now in theaters in the United States. I had the chance to speak with Rasoulof last week via Zoom. He does not speak English, and so I am grateful to the work of interpreter Iante Roach. Still, doing an interview with an interpreter means that each question and answer takes twice as long, and so I decided to focus on questions I did not see answered in depth in the press notes. If you want to learn more topics not covered below, check out those notes. And now, here is the interview, edited for length and clarity.
Christopher Llewellyn Reed: Can you explain the metaphor of “the seed of the sacred fig”? What is this sacred fig and how do the seeds germinate?
Mohammad Rasoulof: The life cycle of the sacred fig, which is a sacred tree on the southern coast of Iran, has both moral and ethical stories within it. As mentioned at the beginning of the film, the seed of this tree is disseminated by bird dung and it sprouts on other trees. These sprouts grow as roots that then eventually reach the ground, and in the ground they form a new tree. And when the new tree is stronger, it eventually stands by itself. After the new trees can stand on their own, they suffocate the host tree. And for that reason, in the south of Iran, the tree is also called the suffocating tree or the suffocation tree.
When I was writing this story, I was thinking how much the tree itself and its name can create a metaphor for this story. If you look at the life story of this tree through my story, from each of the points of view of the characters, you can find a different meaning in the life cycle of the tree. If you think about the life of this tree through the point of view of the father of the story, the horrifying suffocating dimensions of its life come to your mind. If you think about this tree from the perspective of the girls, you can think about the rebirth and the sprouting and the regrowth of trees. I really liked the suspense that was created for the audience to find a balance and a relationship between the story of the tree and the stories within the film.

Iante Roach: (speaking as herself) If I may add one thing, since this is not noted anywhere, but there’s also a translation issue. The actual title of the film is “The Seed of the Fig of the Temples.” And in translation it has been “The Seed of the Sacred Tree.”” But with everything he just said, the temple finds another dimension in there. In the French version, it’s closer to the Persian version.
CLR: What is the title in French?
MR: “The Seeds of the Wild Fig.”
CLR: Right. I just looked it up: “Les Graines du figuier sauvage.”
MR: But then the actual name of the tree in French is “temples.”
CLR: Understood. Thank you so much for those additional details. So, the film is beautifully photographed. Your cinematographer, Pooyan Aghababaei, does an amazing job. You talk in the press notes about needing to keep the crew small so you could avoid detection while filming. Under what kinds of limitations did your cinematographer therefore have to work?
MR: The resources that we had for this film were even less than for a student project. When Pooyan read the script, and especially read the scenes at night, the first question he had was, “How are we going to shoot the night scenes?” The second question was, “Can we find a location for the apartment that has great natural light?” So we were in search of locations with great natural light. It was very important for us to be able to work during the hours with the most natural light. That would be the ideal situation. But at the same time, we had to work with small cameras that also had the capability of capturing natural light.

CLR: I saw you shot on the Sony FX3 and FX6, and they’re small.
MR: Where we wanted a handheld camera, we would use FX3, but if we had the opportunity to use the FX6, we would use it for places where we had a chance to stabilize the camera. For the night scenes, we started with very limited resources, but Pooyan also used some moonlight in the scenes at the village. We started during the day and we gradually proceeded to the dusk and to the nighttime by way of the golden hour.
CLR: Speaking of the village, that is an amazing location and very cinematic. Where is that village and why is it empty?
MR: That is an ancient village. The village itself is supposed to be protected. We chose hours and days of religious holidays where you couldn’t see many people. There are new houses that you cannot see in the camera because we chose an angle that wouldn’t show them. On regular days, people go there and they visit the site, but we chose religious holidays when we knew people were not going to come and that’s why it’s empty.
CLR: Wow. So, I’m curious: you leave Iran, you manage to get to Germany, but how does your film, which is shot in Iran and is about an Iranian subject, come to be Germany’s selection for the Oscars?

MR: You might expect a film that is in the Persian language and on a Persian subject to be coming out of Iran. But the reality is that in Iran, artists are under so much pressure, and because of the censorship, art production as such is not possible. I did not have a chance to work with Iranian producers. I myself was the main producer and the rest were German producers. And I also did all the post-production in Germany and France. That’s why it ended up being mostly a German product. And also, the actors, they left Iran, as well. We all left with German documents, so we no longer have Iranian citizenship.
CLR: And the four main actors, are they all out of Iran and in Germany?
MR: No, only the girls are in Germany. The actress who plays the mother is still in Iran.
CLR: And the father?
MR: He was able to leave Iran about three months ago and he’s now in Australia for a screening of the film.
CLR: I’m glad that so many people were able to make it to safety and I’m glad you were able to make the film. I really liked Evil Does Not Exist, as well. It was a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you!
MR: Thank you very much.

I love the movie but I couldn’t understand then why Sana was played by a mature woman. It was very distracting for me, especially in the first half of the movie. The actress is extremely skilled but there were brief “moments” (seconds, really) when I felt aware of acting (of which I was otherwise unaware) when I felt the actor was doing things to seem younger than she was. Everyone and everything else was seamlessly real to me. It was distracting to me but now I understand that in addition to their talent and excellent skill, it would have been wrong to cast Sana with an actor as young as the character.
That’s interesting. I did not clue in to her being older, I will be honest, but I can understand how that would be distracting if one did. Glad you enjoyed the movie! And yes, it is clear why he would want to make sure to cast adult actors instead of minors. Thanks for reading!