The level of the competition rises again on the last day, with the Iranian Mohammad Rasoulof And the French Michel Hazanavicius. The first presents The Seed of Sacred Fig (The seed of the sacred fig) and after seeing it you understand why it was forced to escape from his land: At the center of the film is a newly appointed magistrate investigating judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Tehran, in charge of draw up charges which a judge then sanctions. And since we are in the days of youth revolt for the death of Mahsa Amini convictions are wasted.
At home, the two daughters are on the side of the protests forcing his wife into a difficult job of mediation, but the film soon takes a more subtle path: he doesn’t want to explain who is right (the real footage of police violence filmed with cell phones and edited into the film leaves no doubt) but delves into the judge’s mind to show how far the indoctrination of the State, obedience to superiors and the belief that everyone is lying can trigger paranoia. More and more a prisoner of his own conspiracy theorythe protagonist becomes a synecdoche of a State to which not even the police regime is enough anymorewhere Religion, Obedience and Delation (the interrogation scene is chilling) are used for first shackle the consciences and then people’s lives.
Michel Hazanavicius instead chose animated drawings to tell La Plus Précieuse des marchandises (The most precious of goods) which was based on the book of the same name by Jean-Claude Grumberg, who was also involved with the director in the script. The story begins with the discovery by a woodcutter’s wife of a baby girl who – we will discover – her father threw out of the train that was taking him to Auschwitz. Personally designed by Hazanavicius, the various characters allow the film to maintain a rate of realism which however manages not to cancel out the fable-like effect: as we follow the daily toil of the woman, forced to also fight against prejudices of her husband, the film gains more and more strength in its hymn to love and mutual understanding.
Sometimes war makes its effects felt the Liberty of Auschwitz has moments of great dramabut the film manages to maintain its own stylistic rigor which allows it to never fall into easy rhetoricthanks also to a drawing with a strong and marked line that recover sweetness in nature illustration.
 and «The Seed of the Sacred Fig» (rating 8/9), two high-level political films){kind=link}