‘Cutting Through Rocks’: Sundance Review

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

Cutting Through Rocks tracks the heroic struggles of local woman Sara Shaverdi to alter the traditional mindset of her Iranian village community. Husband-and-wife team Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni document the first glimmers of social change with honesty, subtlety and guarded optimism, and their compelling film looks set to cut through to further, debate-inspiring festival screenings following its premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic competition.

Shot from inside its community, Rocks is more than simply a polemic

Rocks crams seven years’ worth of shot footage into its 95 minutes, spanning the full arc of Sara’s experience. It is seamlessly edited by Eyni, who is from a similar village and speaks Azeri, or Azerbaijani Turkish – crucial in getting access for the shoot and perhaps for the unguarded frankness of some of the villagers.

Through Sara’s voiceover, we learn that her father preferred having male children to female. He raised her as someone who keeps a careful eye on gender roles, teaching Sara how to ride a motorbike and do construction work on the farm, even allowing her to choose her own clothes. Married but now divorced, Sarah’s unconventionality is accepted, or at least tolerated, by the men of her village – in part because, as well as sorting out their finances, she is also the local midwife.

Sara now intends to become the first female local councillor. She rides around on her trusty motorcycle, drumming up support in a local all-girls school by telling the students that they must start to think of themselves as lawyers and doctors, not as housewives – but changing their minds is not as easy as it seems. Meanwhile, the local men suck on their pipes and mutter about how no good will come of this. Sara promises big changes in the village, specifically that she will bring gas to people’s houses – something the male-run councils have never achieved.

Buoyed by the votes of women and younger men, Sara wins by a landslide and gas does indeed start to be piped in. But the first signs of resistance come after Sara tries to encourage the village men to name their wives as part-owners of the homes they share. Also, to her chagrin, she is refused access to the rubber stamp which would normally come with her new job – the stamp which is necessary to sign off corrupt deals. She is perhaps doing too much, too fast, and the second part of the film focuses on the increasing resistance to Sara’s transformational plans. Eventually she will be brought to court, where something extraordinary will be required of her; something which will strike at the very heart of her identity, and will suddenly take the film into other contemporary issues.

There’s a lot going on, and it’s all skilfully parcelled out. At a more intimate level, we are shown the tender relationship between Sara and Fereshteh, a teenage girl seeking a divorce who is granted permission to live with Sara while the separation is being finalised. Sara sets about educating Fereshteh as she herself was educated by her beloved father. In the film’s main symbol of female empowerment and freedom Fereshteh learns to ride a bike, the rides dramatically shot against the wide, dry expanses of the north west Iranian landscape.

Shot from inside its community, Rocks is more than simply a polemic, though, and is careful to root its message in sequences of day-to-day reality. For women, of course, parts of that reality are still pretty grim: thoughtless sexism is still deeply embedded in the culture and is unquestioningly submitted to by all. Sara Shaverdi is a remarkable woman but, rather than frame her as some kind of superhero, Khaki and Eyni wisely choose to portray her as a flawed but passionate, tough, and resilient human being – the rock-cutter of the title. Sara knows that women could be leading a different life, because she herself is living it. What she doesn’t count on is that the change she seeks cannot be brought about by one single person.

Visually, Cutting Through Rocks plays it pretty straight. But there are occasional stylistic flourishes; for example, silhouetting Sara against a powerful sky to underscore the isolation she sometimes feels. Though local music is employed throughout, the choice was made to use Karim Sebastian Elias’s western score, which adds a hint of wistfulness at the few points where it is discreetly brought in.