ORCA – Review by Pam Grady

Just like any typical sports movie, Orca is an uplifting story of an athlete striving for excellence. But there is nothing typical about Elham Asghari’s (Taraneh Alidoosti) journey as an endurance swimmer in Iran that is typical. A domestic abuse survivor, she recovers her sense of self in the water – as her father observes, she was swimming at age two without anyone giving her lessons.

She possesses the strength necessary to swim in strong currents and over long distances. But when she reaches out to Iran’s sports federation for its blessing, the organization denies her. (This is, after all, a government body that won’t allow women to participate in kickboxing or Muay Thai because it might damage their reproductive organs – say what?)

Bucking the authority’s denial, she sets her sights on breaking a Guinness world record with a plan to swim the Caspian Sea, handcuffed. Even then she faces a variety of obstacles from the federation, the government’s lack of cooperation with or acknowledgement of Guinness, and random groups of very angry men willing to do violence to punish Elham for stepping out of a woman’s tradition role. Every comprise she offers, including her willingness to swim in a full chador that weighs her down in the water, meets with rejection.

But having made up her mind, it is going to take more than an authoritarian government and toxic men to stop her as she takes her cue from the titular marine mammal swimming free in this effervescent, fact-based drama.