Recensioni di Metacritic

It clocks in at three hours but not a scene feels superfluous as its central quartet – dad, mum, two teenage daughters – squabble, fall out and finally implode in a subversive final act.

Rasoulof crafts an extraordinarily gripping allegory about the corrupting costs of power and the suppression of women under a religious patriarchy that crushes the very people it claims to protect.

A victim of a politically motivated jail sentence for supporting the 2022 Masha Amini hijab protests, Rasoulof‘s latest feature will likely anger the Iranian government even more. Especially considering how brilliant “Sacred Fig” is at deconstructing the rampant injustice in the totalitarian state.

It's a remarkable, revolutionary work of art. As precisely focused and tightly constructed as it is expansive in its aspirations, it’s a rallying cry for the irreplaceable value of artistic expression in a world that will repress it at all costs.

As Rasoulof intercuts real footage and fiction, we realize that what the family is going through is an extension of what the entire country has been facing.

The situation Rasoulof depicts is hardly limited to Iran. There are echoes of Nazi Germany and modern-day China in the way average citizens submit, while the pressures to inform on one’s neighbors recall pre-perestroika Soviet policies. Rasoulof’s genius comes in focusing on how this dynamic plays out within a family, which makes it personal.

The film may not be perfect, but its courage – and relevance – are beyond doubt.

This is a sad and frightening story about a family’s undoing, but Rasoulof ekes out some hope too.

Building slowly, the story morphs into a thriller, and finally a sort of horror film, though these parts feel more like decent imitations than real genre work.

The film is uneven: gripping when it maps out psychological stresses in a claustrophobic domestic setting, less so in the final stretches when it incongruously morphs into a women-in-peril thriller.