Hot Picks: Nazanin

The story of the British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was falsely accused of spying and detained by the Iranian government, gripped the British public for the five years she was imprisoned.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was stopped at Tehran airport in 2016 as she was leaving the country with her daughter Gabriella, after visiting her parents. 

Over the next five years, her husband Richard ceaselessly campaigned for her release, and it emerged that she was being held to ransom over a debt the British government was refusing to honour. She was finally released in March 2022 and reunited with her family, shortly after the government handed over £393.8m to Iran.

The entire five-year struggle is captured in 649 Media’s observational documentary, which had exclusive and unprecedented access to both the family at the centre of the international drama and the government officials nominally working to bring Zaghari- Ratcliffe home.

This combination of political intrigue and heart-rending family separation is what makes the documentary so engaging, says Orange Smarty chief executive Karen Young.

“You feel like you can’t walk away from the screen in case you miss some critical piece of information,” she says. “It’s unearthing a story that people are very familiar with, but it’s giving you the full picture, so you’re now tapping into the emotional side.”

The film shows Zaghari-Ratcliffe talking to her daughter Gabriella from prison, the toll of Richard’s hunger strikes as part of his bid to get her released and the family’s emotional reunion following her release.

“You’re becoming emotionally engaged within the story, through visual images, through personal accounts and through factual evidence that comes to light that perhaps people weren’t completely aware of,” Young says.

The documentary screened on Channel 4 in March and rights are now available for everywhere outside of the UK and Ireland.

Young says Orange Smarty has high hopes for the film, with interest coming in the day after rights became available.

“It’s the way the story has been put together, together with a level of access, that makes it a must-buy documentary,” she says.

The documentary is likely to be popular with audiences in English-speaking countries, particularly the US, Young says, but she believes its emotional core will transcend language barriers.

It’s likely there will be interest from public service broadcasters looking to cater to an older audience of traditional documentary watchers, she adds: “I suspect it’s one of those that will have longevity – people will talk about it, so it will be picked up on catch-up and then on to the on-demand platforms to be watched over a longer period.”

There’s a growing appetite for this type of one-off documentary film following the pandemic, she notes.

“In lockdown, people had a lot of time or more time, they were going through this binge-watching phase,” she explains. “I think we’ve slightly exhausted that now – what people are looking for is something that’s really gritty and engaging but doesn’t take a huge amount of time. Features fit perfectly into that gap.”