The film is shot in a nameless Arab nation (though in the interview Nowrasteh mentions Jordan) - undisclosed to avoid local reprisals. Director Cyrus Nowrasteh, who wanted to show Sharia in action because, as he says in an interview, most Westerners 'just don’t get it', is an American-Iranian whose family escaped Iran after the Islamic revolution. Jim Caviezel, who plays the writer, is the only non-Iranian in the cast. Soraya is a woman making the best of the hand she was dealt.These first words, which she wants no villager to understand, are the only English ones the rest of the dialogue is in Farsi. Set in a small village after the Iranian Revolution, Soraya M's story is one of betrayal and a conspiracy that ends in the brutal stoning of an innocent woman. The story of Soraya Manucheri and her horrible fate will stay with you long after the movie ends.

She isn’t a made up person in the movie. In a mountain village in Kuhpayeh, almost 28 years ago, Soraya M got stoned to death on August 15, 1986. In the video, an official from the Islamic State is shown administering the proceedings, at the end of which, the woman is led to a hole in the ground, where she is stoned to death by her father and other men present.The reality.

Unsurprisingly, the book was banned in Iran. So he gets out his tape recorder.The film is based on the book by Freidoune Sahebjam, a French-Iranian journalist who met the real Zahra, investigated Soraya’s life and death and wrote a bestseller about it in 1990. But eventually he follows Zahra to her house - he is a journalist, after all - where she explains that as women can’t be heard under this regime, he must be her voice and tell the world the terrible story of Soraya, her niece, who was schemed against by her adulterous husband and the village mullah and stoned to death only the day before. Stoning was the method to get rid of her.The mullah and the mayor chase the woman off, dismissing her as mad.

Wearing a stylish white dress (really makes those bloodstains pop) she is buried up to her waist in a pit, her hands tied. She has only a short time to comfort her small daughters. Zarha (Shohreh Aghdashloo, who was nominated for an Academy Award for House of Sand and Fog and played Saddam’s wife in House of Saddam) uses her husky voice and beautiful scarves to great dramatic effect as she hurls abuse at the men - weak, faithless liars the lot of them.The verdict is decided upon quickly by the village elders: Soraya is convicted and killed on the same day. This is Iran 1986, seen through an Elle Deco lens. Sunflowers grow in the meadows flocks of birds rise above the nightmare below.

At least we know that Sahebjam got his tape out. It is still permitted in many countries, including Iran, which makes it reason enough to see this film. Stoning makes hanging look gentle.

Stoning Of Soraya