Within the film, Ebadi muses that “no society is absolutely ideal.” She speaks of a nostalgia for her childhood of growing up with her family in Tehran and Hamedan and how suddenly her innocence was interrupted by Mosaddegh (Iran’s first democratically elected leader) being removed from government by a coup organised by British and American intelligence in 1953 and replacing him with the Shah. It assists in providing a really thorough historical background and context for Ebadi’s work and her Persian background.

This context is told with animations and drawings edited into the narration and is a fantastic history lesson as UK schools do not tend to teach these topics frequently. Gifford Engle’s work muses on the history of Persia as being a kind culture, where all religions and cultures were respected, and women were treated as equals. It provides a political lesson, as well as a historical one, of Iran and the First Persian Empire founded by Cyrus the Great (circa 550 BCE). The eighty-minute film speaks on civil unrest and protests from the people of Iran up until the present day and the wrongdoings of the Iranian Islamic Republic and dictatorship.

This film is a tribute to her life’s work and its legacy. Ebadi’s efforts, along with her upbringing in Iran, are the central focus with her personal testimony and her journey to becoming the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. This documentary comes at a perfect time, as potential uprisings fighting for the rights of women are ongoing with even more velocity in Iran and around the world in protest of the country’s human rights violations. Telling the story of Shirin Ebadi’s fight for justice against Iran’s human rights violations, Dawn Gifford Engle’s documentary Shirin Ebadi: Until We Are Free provides a necessary context to the historical, cultural and political changes inflicted upon Iran.

Until We Are Free by Shirin Ebadi