Akrami, Joseph. 2004.

90 min. Canada

Through first-hand accounts in Persian and English by Iranians who say they were tortured for their beliefs, filmmaker Joseph Akrami chronicles human rights abuses by Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist government. All the Iranians in Mr. Akrami’s 90 minute film now live in Canada. He also interviewed Canadian human rights groups, United Nations representatives, and immigration lawyers such as Mary Tatham. Mr. Akrami shows the faces of those whom he says are some of those Iranians, including members of opposition movements, journalists, and students. It provides detailed evidence of the systematic brutalization and torture of the Iranian people and portrays this brutality as the essence of the Iranian regime, not simply a technique to ensure its own survival.