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The Stoning of Soraya

Director Cyrus Nowrasteh's Emotional Film Based on Best Selling Book

Jan 26, 2009 Maryam Nayeb-Yazdi

Cyrus Nowrasteh, director and screenplay writer, has taken the best selling book, The Stoning of Soraya and turned it into a highly-acclaimed movie.

A decade after Cyrus and his wife Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh read the best-selling book The Stoning of Soraya by Freidoune Sahebjam, the couple pursued the motion picture rights. They teamed up to write the screenplay and Cyrus led the project as director.

The film was one of the highly-anticipated films at 2008's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

The story takes place in 1986, a time when Iranians were still gradually adapting to the new rules imposed by the Islamic regime. After his car breaks down, a French journalist (James Caviezel) finds himself stranded in a small village in the south of Iran. While he waits for the repairs to be made on his car, he befriends a woman named Zahra (Oscar nominated actress Shohreh Aghdashloo), who tells him the story of Soraya, a woman who was stoned to death the night before.

Soraya (Mozhan Marno), a wife and mother, has her life turned upside down when her husband insists on divorcing her to marry a 14 year old girl. Soraya refuses to grant him a divorce, knowing that she would be left with no money and support for her children. Her husband, a poor man, conspires with some mullahs to wrongfully accuse his wife of adultery. Since her husband also had the support of local villagers who lied to the courts, Soraya was unable to prove her innocence. Consequently she is found guilty, and by the standards of the new Sharia law, becomes sentenced to death by stoning.

Director Cyrus Nowrasteh explained at TIFF that the act of stoning has created, “Voiceless women, armed with only their innocence and dignity, [who] are no match for the overwhelming primal forces that overrun their town."

The Stoning of Soraya tells a story all too familiar to countless families worldwide who have witnessed a female wrongfully killed in the hands of a national law that proves to be easily lured into corruption and scandal by the temptation of money.

The movie successfully brings to life an emotional story that for many who have lived similar instances may find it hard to watch. At the same time, the film raises awareness of an issue that has been more of a dominant issue since the 1979 revolution in Iran.

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