Pars Arts

The Stoning of Soraya M.

Here’s a new, Iran-focused movie coming soon in the fall: The Stoning of Soraya M., starring Shohreh Aghdashloo, and written/directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh. It’s about a woman who gets stoned in a small town in Iran, and Aghdashloo plays the aunt of that woman, telling the story to an American journalist (played by James Caviezel).

I showed the trailer to Asad, who said, “Jesus, it’s like Not Without My Daughter, times one hundred.” It definitely shares that film’s slick production value, its setting (1980s, Khomeini-era Iran), its marquee names, its focus on the treatment of women in Iran, and its power to shape American perception of Iranians for a long, long time. I’m going to wait until I see the film to decide for myself, but in the meantime, I might pick up the eponymous, non-fiction book the film is based on – an account of Iranian ex-pat journalist, Freidoune Sahebjam, who stumbled into the story while reporting for a French publication in 1986.