We Are Half of Iran's Population

Three months before the disputed Iranian presidential election of 2009, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad started making this political statement cum black book about the discrimination against women in Iran. A broad coalition of Iranian women’s rights activists ranging from religious to secular raise pressing questions about their disadvantaged position in society. The subjects tackled encompass everything from polygamy to inheritance rights, and from censorship and the position of single women to the obstacles facing female entrepreneurs and the lack of women in government posts. One of their demands is that Iran, just like 46 other Islamic states, sign the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. We also hear from women on the street (some of whose identities are concealed), university students, and drug addicts in a shelter. They appeal directly to the candidates, whom we later see sitting in a screening room watching these statements, stories and cries from the heart. Afterwards, the presidential candidates respond to the subjects raised and explore the potential for tackling these abuses, though the eventual winner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refused to cooperate with filmmakers. By the time the film was complete and the election was over, several of the women who worked on it had been imprisoned.