This clandestinely shot documentary about Iranian human-rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh reveals what superheroism looks like in the real world. As significant as the tireless work in lawyer’s cabinets, drab constitutional courts and prison visiting rooms is her symbolic importance: her sinewy persistence and true courage in standing up to Iran’s dogmatic regime have the potential to ignite such qualities in others, and unlock the collective action needed to shift this sclerotic society.
Narrated by Olivia Colman, the film details how this one-time journalist began practising law in 2003, specialising in representing minorities, opposition activists and minors on death row – all groups denied the human rights Iran’s clerics claim are incompatible with Islamic values. Sotoudeh was arrested for endangering state security in 2010, and served more than two years in Tehran’s Evin prison, where she undertook a 50-day hunger strike.
The totalitarianism she is fighting against is on display in one scene where, advocating for an activist on trial at the Revolutionary Court, Sotoudeh asks for evidence to back the charge of colluding with foreign powers. There is none. An apparatchik demands to know why she is “defending true bandits, who are homosexuals, Baha’is, prostitutes, terrorists and street and wilderness thugs”. This Orwellian modus operandi, rewriting reality as the regime needs, is supposedly in the service of upholding traditional values. But on some level, the regime holds family in contempt too. As seen through Sotoudeh’s husband Reza’s weariness, this is evidently their first point of attack, the interminable prison sentences psychologically designed to break down this unit of solidarity.
Sotoudeh’s legal work and street activism show the value of strategic resistance, and are timed when – for domestic or international reasons – they are most likely to extract concessions. In concert with other high-profile dissenters, such as director Jafar Panahi, in whose film Taxi she appears, she seems to be making headway – especially following reformist cleric Hassan Rouhani’s election as president in 2013. But there is no redemptive final act. The film finishes in 2018, when Sotoudeh was rearrested and sentenced to 38 years and 148 lashes. That was commuted, but she remains incarcerated.
• Nasrin is available on 28 May on True Story.
