AN EYE FOR AN EYE – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
How much is a life worth? The provocative documentary An Eye for An Eye raises that question, following one woman in Iran whose in-laws decide whether she deserves execution for killing her husband or their forgiveness for a price.
As the film opens, Tahereh has already served fourteen years in prison for strangling her husband, Hossein, but her future is in limbo. Under Iranian law, her in-laws—specifically, her brother-in-law, as head of Hossein’s family—must determine an amount of “blood money” they’ll accept as restitution, or whether she’s even allowed to live.
Co-directors Tanaz Eshaghian (Love Crimes of Kabul) and Farzad Jafari (Shelter) frame the story partly as a mystery, with a journalist, law enforcement, and even Tahereh’s lawyer questioning whether she acted alone when she killed Hossein, then buried him in a hole in their apartment’s floor. Tahereh and the couple’s children say he was abusive, and a court denied her petition for divorce.
Tahereh is a prickly and curious subject—unrepentant, she likens the time before her arrest to “fifty years of fun”—and An Eye for An Eye explores some inconsistencies in her story. But it also lets viewers sit with her limited choices, both in her noting that she’d rather be known as a killer than unfaithful and through the fascinating negotiations between Hossein’s family and anti-execution activists on her behalf. (Although someone notes the frequency of such executions, I wished the film had included statistics about these or the activists’ efforts.)
Meeting politely over fruits and tea, the female negotiators try to persuade Bashir, Hossein’s brother, and Saaed, Hossein’s nephew, how the Quran counsels it’s better to forgive. Restitution can make amends, they say—a tough argument when Hossein’s elderly mother rails that she wants Tahereh dead. The men, too, want Tahereh to suffer, but they also have bills and at first demand billions in Iranian currency, or roughly about $36,000 USD. With Tahereh having her own money issues, the activists plead for them to consider something more “reasonable.”
Alongside those negotiations are those with Tahereh, her son and her daughter, both young adults. She balks at paying anything, saying she’s already served her sentence, but her children don’t want to lose the only parent they have left. Their father’s family already despises them for forgiving Tahereh in the first place.
Winner of two 2025 Tribeca Film Festival awards (a Special Jury Mention and Best Editing), An Eye for An Eye proves absorbing over an hour and 24 minutes, thanks to the activists’ efforts and its overarching moral dilemma. The sum becomes less about compensation than a plea for Tahereh to live, but what amounts to justice?
