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‘Cutting Through Rocks’ Review: An Iranian Woman Tries to Change Her Village in a Conflicted Documentary
The natural and formalistic collide in 'Cutting Through Rocks,' a Sundance documentary about the first councilwoman in an Iranian village.
All the while, she wears a wide smile and puts on sneakers beneath her lengthy abaya, which take her swiftly from one place to the next, investigating local infrastructure problems that no one else has bothered to fix. It is, first and foremost, an observational piece, and its fly-on-the-wall quality works wonders when the filmmakers happen to be in the vicinity of something cinematically exciting — like when Shahverdi righteously gets into a physical altercation. However, when the reverse becomes true, and Khaki and Eyni finally take charge of how Shahverdi is seen, the result is practically magical: women kick up dirt causing a political stir on liberating bike rides, and tableaus of the film’s magnanimous subject, silhouetted by sunlight, make her look heroic.
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