A group portrait of evil women in Iran. One of them, Marjan, has been a drug dealer since childhood. She was imprisoned for gang crimes in conjunction with armed robbery and kidnapping. With other inmates, some of them convicted for murder, she founded a theatre group that was allowed to perform outside the prison, too. The work bound the women together, changed their perspectives and priorities, but did not turn them into new persons. Nor did it effect any delays in the execution of verdicts – including death sentences. During rehearsals, one of the actors, Safieh, learns that she will be executed on the next day.
Director Ahmad Jalili Jahromi meets his protagonists on equal terms, appoints himself neither lawyer nor judge, and certainly not the women’s probation officer. It’s astounding how the filmmaker manages to steer his narrative around the stereotypes of tragic victim or charismatic gangster moll and equally astounding how little effort is made in this film to court reflexive affection or compassion. Not to belittle affection and compassion, but especially in the cinema they are no more than reflexes and, as such, easily activated. “Sentenced to Death” chooses the harder path.
Ralph Eue