In an impressive feat of direction Nowrasteh accomplishes this, making “Soraya” much more than a film of the political moment or a position paper on the Middle East. In a current events’ vacuum, maybe even set on another planet, the story would work without the benefit of allegory. This is a universal, human story, after all, but not the story of a victim, but of a woman’s remarkable courage and determination to free the truth.  This woman is Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo), and yesterday her niece Soraya M. (Mozhan Marnò), was buried alive up to her chest and stoned to death.

Based on Freidoune Sahebjam’s non-fiction novel of the same name, “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” takes place in 1986, seven years after Iran’s Islamic revolution. Due to car trouble, Freidoune (James Caviezel), a French-Iranian journalist, finds himself stranded in a remote Iranian village.  He had hoped the downtime would allow him to quietly sip tea in a cafe and catch up on some work, but Zahra won’t leave him alone. Discreetly, she flitters about, following, quietly hoping to catch his eye, demanding his attention. The villagers warn Freidoune that Zahra’s crazy, not all there, but a reporter’s instinct wins out and soon he finds himself in her courtyard listening to a very real horror story. From here, in flashbacks, we meet Soraya M. and watch with ever-increasing dread as terrible men, and even some women, move events against her trumping up false charges of adultery.

Soraya’s “sin” is innocence, an inability to recognize events for what they are. She’s a well drawn character whose strength and spirit we admire even as we shake our heads at the naivete which plays such a large part in her demise. She simply can’t fathom the defiance of her husband, Ali, could lead to anything worse than a beating, which she’s willing to take because the divorce he wants in order to marry a much younger woman means no support for Soraya and her children. 

Zahra’s even more fascinating, a clever and wise woman incapable of dishonestly. Though unafraid to speak her mind in a society where such characteristics only mean trouble, Aghdashloo infuses Zahra with such an unspoken dignity and authority that this helps to make perfect sense of her survival. Any act of silencing her would be an admission that she’s right. At the same time, Zahra’s in a harrowing position of her own. Ever watchful, she not only understands that gears are in motion, but where they could lead. But like something out of a nightmare, she can’t stop what’s happening or convince her beloved niece to act until it’s too late.

The three central performances are flawless, the sense of time and place impeccable, and the score beautifully evocative. The pace does slow in spots and the final button on Ali’s relationship with the younger woman was a little too tidy in the irony department for my taste, but the central sequence, the stoning, is unforgettable. Explicit, unflinching and emotionally shattering, it’s also conceived, choreographed and shot like an accomplished short film with a three-act structure and devastating character moments all its own.

Because of the violence, setting, and presence of Caviezel, comparisons to “The Passion of the Christ” are inevitable, but these are two very different films. “The Passion” was about helping the faithful to better understand the suffering of our Lord. “Soraya” isn’t about suffering. Instead it serves as a compassionate and at times visceral reminder that monsters, shielded by monstrous laws, international indifference and those selfishly comforted by the stability of dictators, walk among us; that even today, societies exist where an ideological poison breeds men capable of such wicked and inhuman acts.

But on the flip side, Nowrasteh does something equally important, does something not a single one of these dozen or so anti-war films has dared: he puts a real, human and accessible face on the people of the Middle East. Leftist bigots refuse to do this. It works in opposition to their depraved need to embarrass Bush and America by abandoning millions of Middle Eastern and Muslim innocents to terrorists and death squads. Certainly Nowrasteh shines a light on monsters, but he also sees Soraya and Zahra and Freidoune and children and two somewhat sympathetic but weak and conflicted men caught in a tide of something evil and impossible. “Soraya” is a first in many years, a film that introduces us to the good people of this region and reminds us of our common humanity.

Those images of brave Iranians demanding self-determination currently playing across our television screens will undoubtedly add an emotional resonance to “Soraya” when it opens this Friday, but there’s no expiration date on the broader themes at play here. There will always be evil and there will always be a need to point to it and call it by name.

Set in 1986 Iran – the Islamic Republic of Iran – Stoning is a gut-wrenching film with haunting music.  Nowrasteh’s movie, set to open June 26, is based on a book about the crime by French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam. 

The film opens with Freidoune (James Caviezel) breaking down in his car on his way to the border.  Spending unwanted hours in a small village, he is approached by Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo), a woman the villagers try to shoo away as they call her crazy.  But Zahra has a terrible secret.  She does all she can to get word to the journalist about a terrible injustice committed in the village the previous day when her niece, Soraya M. (Mozhan Marnò), falsely accused of adultery by her cheating husband, Ali (Navid Negahban), was stoned to death per Islamic law. 

Stoning’s premise, repeated with numbing regularity around the world today, is made all the more pressing by the masses of Iranians protesting in the streets today while the brutal Basij militia tries to beat them into submission.  But it’s one thing for a stoning of an accused “adulteress” to occur in Somalia, and quite another for it to happen in the soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran.  If a nation thinks nothing of stoning women to death for the “crime” of adultery while killing peaceful protesters, it takes no imagination to think of what they will do when in possession of a nuclear bomb.  

The film is tightly put together and the acting is natural and intense.  The actors mostly speak Farsi throughout the film, but they communicate volumes, relegating the captions to a supporting role.  Nowrasteh effortlessly allows his film to unfold.  He gradually builds tension, while adding depth to the main characters’ soul.  The end is inevitable as it is jarring, with the males of the village engaging in the collective guilt of the stoning while most of the women watch and wail.  The act of stoning takes away the village’s “dishonor” one stone at a time, according to the mullah. 

It is no small task to adapt a book to the screen, especially a book of the intensity of Sahebjam’s work, but Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh and Cyrus Nowrasteh have done the job with the precision of a brain surgeon.  The husband and wife team add nothing more than needed, while everything needed remains.   

Lastly, a note about John Debney’s music: it is beyond superb.  With a cast and crew of Iranian expatriates making a film about life in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nowrasteh could have easily settled for a selection of traditional Persian folk music.  This would have been true to form, but likely would have missed the opportunity to tightly tailor the music to the requirements of film while appealing to wider audiences.  It is interesting to see that Debney worked on “Passion of the Christ” (for which Debney was nominated for an Academy Award) along with Caviezel five years ago.  Clearly Debney has developed a talent for producing Mideast-themed music for the big screen. 

Cyrus Nowrasteh’s “The Stoning of Soraya M.” could not have come at a better time for the world.  While Iranians struggle to transcend tyranny and most Americans, including our President, remain rooted in inaction, Stoning proves that Hollywood’s capacity to combat evil is still intact.