‘Cutting Through Rocks’: Sundance Review

Dir/scr: Sara Khaki, Mohammadreza Eyni Iran/Netherlands/USA/Germany/Qatar/Chile/Canada. 2025. 95mins

Slicing By Rocks tracks the heroic struggles of native girl Sara Shaverdi to change the normal mindset of her Iranian village group. Husband-and-wife group Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni doc the primary glimmers of social change with honesty, subtlety and guarded optimism, and their compelling movie seems set to chop by to additional, debate-inspiring competition screenings following its premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic competitors.

Shot from inside its group, Rocks is greater than merely a polemic

Rocks crams seven years’ value of shot footage into its 95 minutes, spanning the complete arc of Sara’s expertise. It’s seamlessly edited by Eyni, who’s from an identical village and speaks Azeri, or Azerbaijani Turkish – essential in getting entry for the shoot and maybe for the unguarded frankness of a number of the villagers.

By Sara’s voiceover, we be taught that her father most well-liked having male kids to feminine. He raised her as somebody who retains a cautious eye on gender roles, educating Sara tips on how to experience a bike and do development work on the farm, even permitting her to decide on her personal garments. Married however now divorced, Sarah’s unconventionality is accepted, or at the least tolerated, by the boys of her village – partially as a result of, in addition to checking out their funds, she can be the native midwife.

Sara now intends to turn out to be the primary feminine native councillor. She rides round on her trusty bike, drumming up assist in a neighborhood all-girls faculty by telling the scholars that they need to begin to consider themselves as attorneys and medical doctors, not as housewives – however altering their minds isn’t as simple because it appears. In the meantime, the native males suck on their pipes and mutter about how no good will come of this. Sara guarantees large adjustments within the village, particularly that she’s going to deliver gasoline to folks’s homes – one thing the male-run councils have by no means achieved.

Buoyed by the votes of girls and youthful males, Sara wins by a landslide and gasoline does certainly begin to be piped in. However the first indicators of resistance come after Sara tries to encourage the village males to call their wives as part-owners of the properties they share. Additionally, to her chagrin, she is refused entry to the rubber stamp which might usually come together with her new job – the stamp which is critical to log off corrupt offers. She is maybe doing an excessive amount of, too quick, and the second a part of the movie focuses on the rising resistance to Sara’s transformational plans. Ultimately she will probably be dropped at courtroom, the place one thing extraordinary will probably be required of her; one thing which is able to strike on the very coronary heart of her identification, and can out of the blue take the movie into different modern points.

There’s quite a bit occurring, and it’s all skilfully parcelled out. At a extra intimate degree, we’re proven the tender relationship between Sara and Fereshteh, a teenage woman looking for a divorce who’s granted permission to stay with Sara whereas the separation is being finalised. Sara units about educating Fereshteh as she herself was educated by her beloved father. Within the movie’s predominant image of feminine empowerment and freedom Fereshteh learns to experience a motorbike, the rides dramatically shot in opposition to the vast, dry expanses of the north west Iranian panorama.

Shot from inside its group, Rocks is greater than merely a polemic, although, and is cautious to root its message in sequences of day-to-day actuality. For girls, in fact, components of that actuality are nonetheless fairly grim: inconsiderate sexism remains to be deeply embedded within the tradition and is unquestioningly submitted to by all. Sara Shaverdi is a exceptional girl however, slightly than body her as some type of superhero, Khaki and Eyni properly select to painting her as a flawed however passionate, powerful, and resilient human being – the rock-cutter of the title. Sara is aware of that girls might be main a special life, as a result of she herself resides it. What she doesn’t depend on is that the change she seeks can’t be caused by one single individual.

Visually, Slicing By Rocks performs it fairly straight. However there are occasional stylistic thrives; for instance, silhouetting Sara in opposition to a strong sky to underscore the isolation she typically feels. Although native music is employed all through, the selection was made to make use of Karim Sebastian Elias’s western rating, which provides a touch of wistfulness on the few factors the place it’s discreetly introduced in.