Film Forum

ACADEMY AWARD® NOMINEE – Best Documentary Feature Film

GRAND JURY PRIZE, WORLD DOCUMENTARY CINEMA, 2025 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Patriarchy reigns in the rural Iranian village where 37 year-old Sara Shahverdi—divorced, childless, and an avid motorcyclist—became the first woman elected to city council. Wife and husband team Khaki and Eyni followed Shahverdi's journey over eight years, tracking her inspiring, upstream efforts to subvert economic systems and transform local attitudes (of men and women alike) that destine girls to matrimony and dependence. A midwife and one of 9 children, Sara is both deeply connected to the everyday lives of her fellow villagers and a radical lone voice advocating—at great personal cost—for education over marriage, home co-ownership, and girls on bikes.  

Presented with support from The Richard Brick, Geri Ashur, and Sara Bershtel Fund for Social Justice Documentaries and The Endowed Fund for Emerging Filmmakers

2025     95 MINS.      IRAN / NETHERLANDS / USA / GERMANY / QATAR / CHILE / CANADA          
IN AZERI TURKISH AND FARSI WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Reviews

 “[An] intimate observational documentary that becomes a marvel of insight... powerful in its portrait of individual resilience and its indictment of authoritarian regimes.”
– POV Magazine

“A deftly shaped work of cinematic nonfiction that opens with a literal bang, as we cut from a black screen to a middle-aged, headscarf-clad woman wrestling with a metal door that’s become unhinged; eventually she decides to buzzsaw through the surrounding stone enclosure to make it fit back in. It’s an apt metaphor for the formidable Sara Shahverdi, a longtime divorcee in a deeply religious region of northwest Iran—a woman who’s spent most of her life flouting gender norms and giving the finger to convention. The former midwife is also a vocal advocate for the empowerment of women and girls, which includes access to education and an end to child marriage. And, of course, she’s also an advocate for the right to ride a motorcycle, her greatest passion of all.”
– Lauren Wissot, IndieWire