Political movements for justice are rarely as neat or uncomplicated as they appear in the history books. Even as they unfold in real time, they are too often painted by the media in broad strokes of black and white. But as Martin Luther King Jr. observed nearly 60 years ago, “the line of progress is never straight.”
A War On Women, a stirring new documentary directed by Raha Shirazi and co-written by Toronto-based journalist Samira Mohyeddin, traces 40 years of feminist resistance in Iran, from the lead-up to the 1979 revolution to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement that erupted in 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the country’s morality police.
In conversation with The Grind, Mohyeddin says she laments that the film is set to open at a time that is drastically different than when filming wrapped. Outside of Iran, she argues, the feminist movement has largely been co-opted by those less interested in equality than in drumming up support for foreign intervention in service of regime change in Iran. The brave efforts of those fighting for an end to gender discrimination have been used by the U.S. and Israel as pretext for launching an illegal war on Iran.
Still, the history presented in A War On Women remains essential and inspiring.
Blending remarkable archival footage and interviews with seven prominent activists, the film reinterprets and complicates the Western narrative of postrevolutionary Iran in the 20th century, casting women not as mere victims of a brutal and misogynist regime, but as an evolving frontline of popular resistance to the Islamic Republic’s gender discrimination laws.
Mohyeddin says the film aims to shed light on the origins of the Iranian women’s movement and to draw a through line to the protests against compulsory hijab laws that resonated around the globe decades later.
“There were many women before Masa Amini, women who were killed silently, whose voices we didn’t hear from,” Mohyeddin says. “It was important to highlight these women and to tell their stories.”
A War On Women begins in the early 1960s, at a time when the women’s movement was growing, expanding its scope beyond access to education and literacy to the fight for constitutional rights, eventually winning the right to vote in 1963.
By 1975, women’s rights activist Mahnaz Afkhami — one of the women interviewed for the documentary — had risen to the Iranian cabinet, eventually becoming one of the world’s first ministers for women’s affairs.
By 1979, the Iranian monarchical leader (and U.S. ally) Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown and replaced by the Islamic Republic. The new government was led by the Shia cleric Ruhollah Khomeini, who would serve as supreme leader of Iran until his death in 1989.
“You could see within the first two months who the targets of this revolution were,” Mohyeddin says, noting that within weeks of the revolution, Khomeini annulled Iran’s Family Protection Law, hardwon series of rights that allowed women to divorce and have custody of their children. “All of those things were just done away with, making clear that women were going to be the first victims of this system of governance.”
But the documentary also makes clear that the women’s movement would not so easily be silenced. Within weeks of the revolution tens of thousands of women participated in a demonstration against Khomeini’s plans to implement gender segregation and mandatory veiling laws.
Featuring candid and moving interviews, the documentary moves in a brisk and linear fashion through the decades following the revolution, showing how the feminist movement evolved in response to deepening gender discrimination laws.
Iranian women, the documentary convincingly shows, have long been the government’s primary victims. And it has long been Iranian women who have formed the frontline of resistance.
The film culminates with an emotional overview of the 2022 “Women, Freedom, Life” uprising, in which Iranian women bravely defied compulsory hijab laws, risking (and in many cases paying with) their lives to alert the world to the broader struggles of the feminist movement.
A War on Women ends on an optimistic note, with a montage of social media clips showing unveiled Iranian women dancing freely and expressing joy in public spaces — a testament to what Mohyeddin calls the “meaningful impact” of the “Women, Freedom, Life” movement, even if compulsory “chastity” laws remain in place.
“If you go to Tehran today, they’re not arresting women for not wearing the hijab anymore,” Mohyeddin says, “And so in that respect, the movement was successful. But it was never just about hijab — it’s really about the second-class nature of women across the country.”
“As much as we want to think of this regime as being strictly ideological, they also understand that if they want to stay in power, they’re going to have to give a little,” she adds.
Of course, much has changed since Shirazi and Mohyeddin wrapped the filming of A War on Women in the fall of 2024.
By that time, she says, the momentum that erupted in 2022 had largely been co-opted by Western or imperial actors. In a televised address around that time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the globally recognized “Woman, Life, Freedom” slogan in Farsi while threatening to topple the Iranian government, in what Mohyeddin saw as a major nail in the coffin of the movement.
At the start of 2026, many in the Iranian diaspora, including some of the activists featured in the documentary, were loudly supporting foreign intervention and regime change.
In late February, after the Islamic regime fatally cracked down on anti-government protests that had erupted across the country, the U.S. and Israel started their illegal war on Iran with the aim of overthrowing the Islamic Republic. On the first day of the war, a missile hit a primary school in the Iranian city of Minab, killing more than 170 people, mostly young girls between the ages of seven and 12.
Though the U.S. and Israel were able to assassinate several Iranian government officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic has remained intact.
Mohyeddin has been outspoken against foreign intervention in Iran, insisting that political change begins from within.
“Freedom is not bestowed from above, it is claimed from within: by those who risk everything to declare that they, and only they, will decide their destiny,” she wrote in the Globe and Mail in January. “Iranians deserve that right – to own their struggle, shape their narrative, and determine their path to freedom, on their own terms.”
It’s a perspective Mohyeddin encourages viewers to keep in mind as they watch A War on Women.
“I am someone who remembers how the women of Afghanistan were used in order to launch a war on Afghanistan, and then we just ended up with the Taliban back in power,” she says. “We know that women’s movements have always been co-opted by the West — you know, ‘we are coming to save women from this barbaric culture.’”
“The last thing we want is for our film to be used in order to justify a war on our country,” she adds.
