Please join us for this film screening and discussion
hosted by the United Nations Association of New York
Seed of the Sacred Fig
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Monday | 24 February 2025 | 6:30 to 9:45 p.m.
Admission:
UNA Members: $10
Non-Members: $15
Dolby 88 Screening Room
1350 Avenue of the Americas (at West 55th Street)
Lobby Level
New York, NY 10019
6:30 p.m. | Film Screening
9:15 p.m. | Q+A
Screening begins promptly at 6:30 p.m. followed by a Q+A discussion
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Registration for this event coming soon
Shot entirely in secret, dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof's award-winning thriller THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG is a tense familial drama: when Iman is promoted to investigating judge on Tehran’s high court, he and his wife, Najmeh, are excited for their elevated social status. But when his government-issued gun goes missing while his daughters Resvan and Sana are glued to their phones, expressing support for women-led student protests, Iman grows increasingly paranoid and mistrusting of his own loved ones.
• Special Jury Prize | 2024 Cannes Film Festival
• 2025 Academy Award Nomination | Best International Feature Film
A lacerating critique of a patriarchal regime crumbling from within, Rasoulof combines the fictional narrative with real images of the 2022–23 Jina protests in Iran that were violently suppressed by Iranian authorities.
The film’s director clandestinely fled Iran two weeks before the Cannes premiere, after receiving an eight-year prison sentence for standing up to the brutal theocratic regime. His nail-biting escape led him into an exile in Germany to finish the edit of the film, and when the director showed up in Cannes, the response was overwhelming. When the film was announced as a selection at the festival, the Iranian government interrogated the cast and crew, subjecting them to travel bans, with some leaving the country as well.
According to the New Statesman, “Rasoulof has made a film not about his own situation, instead focusing on what participation in this system does to the oppressor (just as in There is No Evil, he exposed what capital punishment does to those required to perform it). The Seed of the Sacred Fig is an immense achievement, revealing how different this revolt — the Jina Revolution — has been. Led by astonishingly courageous young women, who resist brute force with mobile phone footage, this is a new generation, demanding life.”
After being feted at Cannes, where it won a special jury prize, the film is now up for the 2025 Best International Feature Oscar.
We invite you to attend this screening of this powerful and widely award-winning film, followed by a Q+A session with a special guest.
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From the Reviews
“A thriller of propulsive skill and blunt emotional force, marrying the muscularity of an action film to the psychological intensity of a chamber drama.” —Justin Chang, The New Yorker
“About everyday Iranians, particularly women, coming to realize that a monster — or, at least, a functionary of a monstrous entity — is in the house with them. With calm insistence, Rasoulof depicts the shaking awake of perhaps whole swaths of Iranians who have found themselves no longer able to abide or ignore the injustices occurring on their doorsteps… A mighty tribute to the filmmaker’s many countrywomen who continue to risk it all in the fight for their lives.” —Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
“A brazen and startling picture which…does justice to the extraordinary and scarcely believable drama of his own situation and the agony of his homeland. It’s a movie about Iranian officialdom’s misogyny and theocracy, and sets out to intuit and externalise the inner anguish and psychodrama of its dissenting citizens… [It] begins as a downbeat political and domestic drama in the familiar style of Iranian cinema, and then progressively escalates to something extravagantly crazy and traumatised — like a pueblo shootout by Sergio Leone.” —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“Masterful. A livid, thinking-person’s thriller…Within this family, we can see the same tensions playing out that have galvanized so many in Iran as a whole…[A] gripping and all-around more suspenseful look at the extremes to which the older generation will go to maintain its control.” —Peter Debruge, Variety
“That THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG starts off like the kind of subtle, intricately made chamber piece that Iranian cinema has been known for, only to veer toward the horrific (and, at the very end, toward something closer to a western), is thus only natural. Given that he’s one of the leading chroniclers of his country’s dire state, and one whose own life and security hang in the balance with each new movie, it’s hard right now to imagine Rasoulof making anything else.” —Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter
Watch the official trailer for SEED OF THE SACRED FIG
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