Sara Shahverdi appears in Cutting Through Rocks (اوزاک یوللار) by Sara Khaki and Mohammad Reza Eyni, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. | Photo by Sara Khaki. Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Cutting Through Rocks Review: Sara Shahverdi’s Courageous Stand

Sundance 2025

/
6 mins read

Cutting Through Rocks
(Iran/Germany/USA/Netherlands/Qatar/Chile/Canada, 94 min.)
Dir. Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki
Programme: World Cinema Documentary Competition (World Premiere)

 

In the quest to reveal the truths hidden behind closed doors, vérité-based documentaries can achieve astonishing results. The husband and wife team Mohammadreza Eyni and Sara Khaki spent many years filming in a remote village in Iran to capture the rise and fall of 37-year-old Sara Shahverdi, the first woman elected to public office in her conservative community. This victory was a remarkable accomplishment under Iran’s repressive regime, more so because Shahverdi achieved a landslide victory. In Cutting Through Rocks, these co-directors proved to be an ideal pairing for this project thanks to their patience that allows the story to unfold while gaining the trust of the community they depict.

In such secluded parts of the country, villagers tend to be more fundamentalist than citizens elsewhere in Iran. The film suggests that they are particularly hostile to strangers and abide by strict gender role expectations. Under typical circumstances, collaboration with any filmmakers might have proven difficult, but this particular co-directing team has an advantage. Not only were they a married couple, but Eyni’s knowledge of their language and culture gained them enough trust for entry. In this traditional society, Khaki also played a vital role in that her presence allowed them to gain access to the women of the community. Their time and perseverance paid off. Due to its methodical approach, this intimate observational documentary becomes a marvel of insight.

The film gives audiences a thorough telling of Shaverdi’s story to illustrate the significance of her election under these circumstances. As a motorcyclist, land owner, recent divorcée, and former midwife-turned-fierce citizen advocate, Shahverdi had already beaten seemingly insurmountable odds. She wasn’t a housewife, and she was not raising children. She wasn’t overly interested in finding a man, either. But when Shahverdi started to work to empower the women of her society, openly defying the embedded stereotypes, the tables started to turn. Once elected, she lectured girls in school about the benefits of pursuing higher education and intervened in family disputes in the community: she counselled men about their demands on the females in their lives. Even when a family tried to force its a young, divorced daughter to remarry, Shaverdi tried to shield herby taking her into her own house.

Through their observational approach, Eyni and Khaki quickly draw the viewer in. They know how to utilize Shahverdi’s natural charm. The film opens with a scene occurring right in the midst of her family home. It’s a pleasant equitable domestic scenario, as Shahverdi’s brother doles out her share of the profits from the sale of some shared crops. Before long, she is called on to help her sisters in a family squabble. We watch as that chaotic scene unfolds and then dissolves into laughter after she quells tensions and averts the crisis. She and her sisters—all the women and girls in this film, really—have an indomitable spirit that shines despite their circumstances.

One of the keys to this documentary’s success is its laser focused perspective. Episodes and scenes from daily life flow one into another, establishing a natural and familiar rhythm. It’s the peaceful pulse of a community where time and place do not exist. The film seamlessly swallows us up in these everyday occurrences. The idea of Shaverdi running as a candidate in the upcoming elections seems to emerge from an organic place in her interactions with her fellow citizens. Men and women alike hold Shahverdi in high esteem—not just within her family but in the community. She gives advice, stands up for women’s rights, and settles disputes. There’s a scene where even the men at the café speak of her as a natural leader.

The documentary does not veer off into a larger treatise on life in Iran because there’s no need.  But it’s exactly this tightened focus that creates a sense of shock when the inevitable happens. Within the context of the film, it seems like events could go a certain way – a more hopeful way – as the film sets up a perspective that aligns with Shahverdi’s vision of the world. When the men perceive that she has gone too far in questioning their authority and power, they use the law to retaliate. Their methodology involves an attack on her very identity. The frightening aspect of this is that, according to the law, they can proceed with their plan.

Cutting Through Rocks is one of those profound vérité documentaries that are only possible through the patience and perseverance of the filmmakers. There’s an alchemy at work that transforms this individual focus into a frightening expression of reality. It couldn’t be more powerful in its portrait of individual resilience and in its indictment of authoritarian regimes.

Cutting through Rocks premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Barbara is co-host/co-producer of Frameline who joined during its CKLN days. As a freelance writer and film critic for the past 30 years, she has contributed to numerous dailies and magazines including The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Film Encyclopedia, Box Office Magazine as well as to several books. A veteran of the Canadian film industry, Barbara has worked in many key areas including distribution and programming, and has also served on various festival juries

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