Release Date: May 27

Run Time: 114 minutes

Classification: TBA

Language: Farsi with English subtitles

If you think that life is tough or people are unfair, I urge you to hear the true story of Soraya, a daughter, wife and mother who suffered one of the most unforgivable injustices that is still happening in unknown numbers around the world today.

Director Cyrus Nowrasteh (The Path to 9/11) has brought to life French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam’s book, “The Stoning of Soraya M.” in extraordinarily brilliant yet blunt fashion. In 1986 when travelling through Iran, Sahebjam (played in the film by Jim Cavizel, The Passion of the Christ) became stranded in the small Iranian village of Kupayeh, which clearly had something to hide. Despite the best efforts of the village mayor (David Diaan) and mullah (Ali Pourtash) to silence the ‘poison’, a noble and brave women of the community Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo, The House of Sand and Fog) did everything she could except forcibly tie Sahebjam down to make him listen to the story of Soraya. 

Like many similar communities across the Middle East, Kupayeh is a man’s world. Soraya is a loyal yet inconvenient wife to Ali (Navid Negahban), who is in love with  a 14-year-old girl whom he met  whilst she was visiting her wealthy doctor father on death row in the local prison where Ali worked. However,  Ali is already married and had four children – two sons and two daughters – and to pay his wife for a divorce would be very expensive.  Instead he and the shifty town mullah cook up some evidence to have Soraya convicted of adultery.

As this plan unfolded I had to keep reminding me that this was a true story, that this had actually happened. At first I was just astounded that Ali just didn’t marry the girl anyway – naively I thought that this happened in those communities all the time. How in God’s name did the mullah see that this was the way of his people’s religion? However, possibly the most unjust thing of all is that innocence until proven guilty is not a right any women of this man’s world received.

After Soraya is convicted of adultery - by a panel consisting of the mayor, mullah, her husband and father – you know what is coming. It’s unbearable enough just knowing what happens, but to actually see it is horrific. The scene is not shortened nor left to one's imagination. Right from when her hands are tied and she is buried up to her waist in the ground, to when the women of the town are ‘allowed’ to leave her disgraced, mutilated body by the river for the dogs, as an audience we feel every blow with her.  Still, I am haunted by the image of the mullah given a stone to each of Soraya’s sons, and saying “do it for God”.

The next day it is all over.  The town square is covered with glitter, not blood, as the local circus is in town. Soraya is forgotten.

As a film, I feel that The Stoning can’t be critiqued. It’s a fantastic film, but it’s bigger than that. It is a true and appalling tale of human nature, which despite these primitive acts, still happens today. People simply have to see it. Awareness is the first step to prevention. 

Laura Macintosh.