How Oscar-nominated documentary ‘Cutting Through Rocks’ shines a light on Iran’s gender inequality

A vérité portrait of a defiant woman who breaks through gender norms in a village in north­west Iran, Cutting Through Rocks is the first Iranian documentary to be nominated for an Academy Award. The importance of this recognition is not lost on Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni, who produced, directed and edited the film.

“So many Iranian dramas have been nominated for the Oscars but this is a big achievement for an Iranian documentary,” says Eyni, talking from this year’s Sundance, 12 months after the film premiered there and went on to win the grand jury award for World Cinema Documentary.

It is a bittersweet moment, however, given the volatile situation in Iran with its brutal repression of demonstrations, imprisonment and murder of civilians, and internet shutdown. “We want to be happier,” says Khaki, “but our friends and family are affected, and so many unknowns are unfolding. While we are filled with joy at this honour, the first feeling that we have is exhaustion.”

Cutting Through Rocks is Khaki and Eyni’s feature debut following their collaborations on the International Documentary Association Awards-nominated Our Iranian Lockdown (2020) and Emmy-­nominated, multi-director Convergence: Courage In A Crisis (2021). The film introduces fearless 30-something Sara Shahverdi as she fixes the front gate to her house. It becomes clear this is a stubborn woman who will not give up, regardless of how big the struggle. It segues into another battle, this time to demand that her sisters receive the share of their inheritance that her brothers have forced them to sign away. She then takes her fight against the patriarchy into elected office when she runs for a council seat and becomes an inspiration for women and girls in her community.

Born and raised in Tehran, Khaki was eager to investigate how women in Iran are empowering themselves and other women in their communities. After months of research, she was told about Shahverdi who lives in a small village in northwest Iran, rides a motorcycle, is divorced and lives alone, and has delivered some 400 babies in her role as a midwife.

“I grew up encountering a lot of women like Sara who are resilient and fight for their independence,” says Khaki. “I emigrated to the US at a young age and realise that a lot of the issues in the film such as gender injustice are a problem throughout the world, especially the way in which women’s bodies become the battleground. Those are the themes I had in mind.”

After six months of phone calls, Shahverdi disclosed that she was planning to run for council. If she won, it would make her the first female councillor in her area.

“I knew that was a story worth telling,” recalls Khaki. “But I also knew that given the dynamic of the village and that it’s a male-dominated society and given the fact that we wanted to make a very cinematic story, I needed a co-creator.”

Khaki contacted Eyni thanks to his storytelling and cinematography skills, and because he was born and grew up in the same area of Iran. “I know about the culture, I have witnessed similar stories, and I speak the Azeri-Turkish language of the area,” says Eyni. “I knew this was a fantastic opportunity to make a film about the community I’m from. But making such an intimate film wasn’t possible without Sara. It was real dual collaboration.”

Landslide victory

Cutting Through Rocks took seven years to shoot, with Khaki and Eyni making eight filming visits, of 30 to 90 days, between 2017 and 2023, during which time the pair got married. There was a new development on each occasion they returned, from Shahverdi winning the seat in a landslide victory, to her securing the laying of gas pipes into the village, to helping a girl bride through her divorce, to fighting for home ownership rights for wives. The final battle comes when she is taken to court on unspecified charges where the judge makes a shocking demand (which will not be revealed here).

“We didn’t set out to make an eight-year film,” says Khaki. “We wanted to get a sense of the village, the story, Sara Shahverdi and how she dealt with power. We recently heard from Sara that 150 women now share ownership of their homes with their husbands. Seeing that ripple effect is incredible, how women are standing up for their rights.”

One motif that runs through the film was the image of Shahverdi on her motorcycle, riding through the countryside like a frontierswoman on horseback. The final scene is an aerial shot of her leading a group of women on bikes. It is a development that astonished the filmmakers. “Now a woman riding a motorcycle is completely normal, not just in the village but in the region and that’s remarkable,” says Khaki. “Through Sara’s perseverance and despite the backlashes we record in the film, she has normalised women riding motorbikes.”

Khaki emigrated to the US as a teenager in the early 2000s and graduated from the University of Maryland, going on to work as a film editor. Eyni studied at Tehran University of Fine Arts and at the Tribeca Film Institute. “We’re very happy that many reviewers talked about the cinematic aspect of the film,” says Eyni.

“We were always asking ourselves, ‘What is the story?’” continues Khaki. “As time went on, the themes started emerging, which was hard to see in imagery. One was the theme of invisibility in contrast to the visibility Sara is pushing for. All women are stay-at-home housewives and mothers, and we asked ourselves, ‘How do we tell that story visually?’”

One scene sees the dashed hopes of a young girl Shahverdi has inspired as she prepares for her wedding day, a lonely figure gazing out from behind the veil. “We spent a day with the family and we had a lot of footage but we ended up with that image of her behind a lace curtain. We didn’t need to include much more of that transition from girlhood to adulthood,” says Khaki.

Citing filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami, Asghar Farhadi, Vittorio De Sica and Ken Loach, Khaki and Eyni always had a purpose behind each visual choice. “Social sensitivity and visual aspects and cinematic story­telling is what we wanted,” says Eyni.

Negotiating tactics

For the first three years of production, the filmmakers were on their own with no resources. It was, says Khaki, a “miracle” that they made the film as they wanted: in addition to convincing the community to allow them into their homes, they had to negotiate access to court and school and endure a police raid when their hard drives were confiscated, only to be returned when the authorities realised they were just filmmakers.

A number of executive producers joined the project as they were completing it and after Sundance, including Sheila Nevins, Meadow Fund, Chicken and Egg Films, InMaat, Sundance Film Institute and IDFA, while Autlook Filmsales picked up the title in time for last year’s Berlin market.

Cutting Through Rocks has not been shown in Iran but the community has seen trailers and Shahverdi has become a local hero. Visa and travel restrictions have prevented her from accompanying the film on its festival journey, although she was permitted to go to South Korea for a screening at DMZ International Documentary Film Festival.

“The whole process for us was cutting through rocks,” says Khaki who hopes they will make their next film on similar themes in Iran, Europe or the US. “We’ve been working as hard since Sundance last year as we did during production because we are self-distributing. But we are humbled for the recognition and support we’ve received.”

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