Those seeking a cinematic escape from this week’s barrage of “Transformers” silliness couldn’t find a much more sober alternative than Cyrus Nowrasteh’s “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” an adaptation of the non-fiction bestseller by French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam.
A spare, moving study of gender persecution in 1980s Iran, as frank and unpretentious as its title, Nowrasteh’s fact-based drama may pivot on the eponymous ritual killing, but builds its larger narrative on more cathartic themes of storytelling and silence-breaking. As such, while it may sound like a grim night at the movies, it’s an oddly hopeful film – one whose accessibility was proved with the runner-up Audience Award at last year’s Toronto fest.
Shohreh Aghdashloo (whom you’ll remember from her deservingly Oscar-nominated work in 2003’s “House of Sand and Fog”) plays Zahra, a senior resident of a remote desert village seeking retribution against the town’s male elders for their collective murder of her niece, the Soraya of the title.