In the summer of 2007 and older man approached an architecture student Reyhaneh Jabbari, who had a side job as an interior designer, and asked her to design his office. During the site inspection, he tried to rape her. She stabbed him in self-defence, for which she was arrested for murder and sentenced to death. She spent seven years in a Tehran prison, during which time her family hired lawyers and worked to bring the case to the public. But despite the efforts of Iranian and international human rights activists, the Iranian judiciary coldly continued to cite the right of blood revenge as an irreversible legal basis for death sentence. This meant that, until Reyhaneh withdrew her accusation against the deceased perpetrator, his family (in this case, the tragic decision fell on his youngest son, perpetuating the vicious circle of violence) had the right to demand her death. Like a modern Antigone, in the courtroom Reyhaneh resolutely insisted on truthfulness of her testimony, and was executed at only 26 years old. At the very end, she mustered the strength to ask her family to forgive her killers – forgive, but not forget; forgive, but not allow this ever to happen again. With the help of minutely detailed models of the prison bedrooms and courtroom, the original audio and visual materials smuggled from Iran, and the actress Zar Amir Ebrahim (Holy Spider), who lent her voice to Reyhaneh, director Steffi Niederzoll makes visible the injustice intrinsic to the system itself and its treatment of women, paying tributes to the fallen warrior for women’s rights. A bitter admonition of the Sharia law reminds us why, since the first days of the anti-regime protests in Iran, „Woman, life, freedom!“ has become the dominant slogan of the entire movement. (DP)

Awards and festivals: 

Berlinale (2023) – world premiere, Compass-Perspektive Award, Peace Film Award; CPH:DOX (2023) – F:ACT Award; The Hague Movies That Matter Festival (2023)