The Stoning of Soraya M.

The Stoning of Soraya M. (2009) is a drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh and adapted from French journalist Freidoune Sahebjam's account of a real event in a remote Iranian village in the summer of 1986. A broken-down car strands Sahebjam (James Caviezel) there long enough for a woman named Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo) to press a cassette tape into his hand and tell him what happened the day before.

Her niece Soraya's husband wanted out of the marriage but refused to pay what he owed. His solution was to invent a charge of adultery, recruit her own father and son as witnesses, and let the village mullah do the rest. Mozhan Marnò plays Soraya with a quiet composure that makes the film's final act almost unbearable to watch. The story is framed as a race — Zahra trying to get the truth to someone who can carry it out before the men in the village silence her too.

Nowrasteh shoots the village as a closed, airless world where law bends to whoever shouts loudest. This is a hard watch, and deliberately so — the discomfort is the point. Stream The Stoning of Soraya M. (2009) online on iFILM.