SONBOL

Niko Apel
Germany, Iran 2007 | 54 Min. | DigiBeta, OmeU

So why don’t you find your­self a hus­band then?“ asks Sonbol’s mother. The daugh­ter responds with silence. Sonbol Fatemi is 35 years old. She is single. She has her own den­tistry prac­tice, and on the side she likes to race cars in rally com­pe­ti­tions – espe­cial­ly against men. Sonbol lives in the holy city of Mashad in the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran. To lead the kind of life she wants to live, she has to fight every day: against her mother, who would like to see her mar­ried; against the local sport­ing author­i­ties, who want to ban women from com­pet­ing in the rally races; and, not least of all, against her own doubt as to whether or not God is on her side. SONBOL is the por­trait of a woman who just wants to be who she is, and has to pay a high price to do so. The film pro­vides a unique look into a soci­ety full of con­tra­dic­tions – the set­ting of one woman’s rally race through life.