The Stoning of Soraya M.

A French Iranian journalist whose car breaks down in an Iranian village is stopped by an old woman. She wants to tell him what happened the day before: her niece Soraya was accused of adultery on a charge her husband invented so that he could marry someone else, the village council ruled, and she was stoned to death. The film is not interested in a debate about faith. It is interested in slander receiving institutional approval: the husband's lie is endorsed first by the mullah, then by the village elders, then by the woman's own father. Nobody tests the claim because it suits nobody to test it. The form is direct and hard: village streets, the square, and a stoning in the final section shown almost in real time, uncut. That choice is both the film's force and the thing most criticised about it. Cyrus Nowrasteh directed. The source is the 1990 book by the French Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam, and the events took place in 1986. Shohreh Aghdashloo plays the aunt and carries the film; Mozhan Marnò plays Soraya. After screening in Toronto it had a narrow release. Who it is for: viewers who want hard drama drawn from real events and Aghdashloo's performance. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot take the execution scene, or viewers likely to read the film as representing Iran as a whole. It shows a single case, but its tone leaves room for generalisation.