Factual

Nasrin – Voce del Popolo (tr: Nasrin – Voice of the People) tells the story of Nasrin Sotoudeh and the Iranian women's rights movement. The documentary, premiering on Sky Documentaries on Tuesday, May 30 at 9:15 p.m., chronicles her defiance of laws that violate personal freedom in her country. In the original, English version, the documentary is narrated by Academy Award winner Olivia Colman.

Since 2003, Nasrin has fought tirelessly for the rights of women, children, LGBT prisoners, religious minorities, journalists and artists, and those facing the death penalty. She was arrested in June 2018 simply for doing her job, representing a number of women protesting Iran's mandatory hijab law. She was sentenced to 38 years in prison and to receive 148 lashes, but even from prison she continued to defy the authorities, while an Amnesty International petition calling for her release garnered more than a million signatures from 200 countries. But Nasrin still remains imprisoned.

Directed in Iran by filmmakers Jeff Kaufmann and Marcia S. Ross, who risked being arrested to make this film, the documentary includes many testimonies from women and men who have found in Nasrin an example of courage and strength and who are fighting for the same goals: Shirin Ebadi, former Iranian lawyer and judge, human rights activist and founder of the Center for Human Rights Defenders in Iran, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts for democracy and human rights; Narges Hosseini, a young graduate, was arrested in 2018 for removing her headscarf on Revolution Street in Tehran to protest Iran's mandatory hijab law. She was arrested and soon represented by Nasrin Sotoudeh; Iranian activist Reza Khandan, Nasrin Sotoudeh's husband, has been jailed several times, most recently from September to December 2018 for writing on Facebook about human rights violations in Iran. He was charged with acting against Iran's national security and advocating "anti-hijab" and still faces a six-year prison sentence; director Jafar Panâhi, who in 2010 was banned from making movies for 20 years and from leaving Iran, but has continued to make acclaimed films, including Taxi, in which he plays a Tehran taxi driver and Nasrin Sotoudeh one of his passengers, which won an award at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in 2015. In 2012 he and Nasrin Sotoudeh won the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought; finally, Mansoureh Shojaee, one of the leaders of the Iranian women's rights movement and the creators of the One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality and co-founder of the website The Feminist School - imprisoned several times in Iran, she now lives in exile in the Netherlands and founded the Iranian Women's Movement Museum and the online platform Iranian Women's Movement Documentation Center.