A documentary about the Aban Tribunal has been touring European cities at a moment when international audiences are increasingly eager to understand Iran’s protest movements, the state violence used to suppress them and the struggle by victims to preserve evidence and obtain justice.
Directed by Iranian filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi, the 93-minute documentary Beyond the Lies centres on the Iran Atrocities Tribunal, widely known as the Aban Tribunal, and the protesters, bereaved families, eyewitnesses and whistleblowers whose testimony exposed the structures of power behind the violent suppression of Iran’s November 2019 protests.
The film is not simply a retrospective account of the crackdown. Its central story is the creation and work of the Tribunal itself: how survivors and victims’ families, denied any prospect of an independent investigation inside Iran, worked with civil-society organisations to establish an alternative forum for truth and accountability outside the country.
The Aban Tribunal was initiated by Justice for Iran and two other human-rights organisations. Responding to calls from the mothers and families of those killed, the organisations mandated a panel of internationally recognised lawyers to hear evidence and determine whether crimes committed by Iranian state forces during the November 2019 protests amounted to crimes against humanity. The Tribunal’s hearings took place in London in November 2021 and February 2022. Its proceedings, evidence and judgement are available on the official Aban Tribunal website.
From a hidden crackdown to a public tribunal
The protests began on 15 November 2019 after the Iranian authorities announced a sharp increase in fuel prices. Demonstrations rapidly spread across the country and developed into a wider expression of anger over poverty, corruption, repression and the political system itself. Security forces responded with firearms and military-grade weapons, killing protesters and bystanders and arresting and injuring thousands.
At the same time, the authorities imposed a near-total nationwide internet blackout. The shutdown prevented protesters from communicating, obstructed independent reporting and sharply limited the transmission of videos and other evidence to the outside world. When access was partially restored, citizen footage contradicted the official portrayal of demonstrators as violent “rioters,” showing unarmed people being shot in streets and revealing the scale of the repression that had taken place under cover of darkness.
Two years later, witnesses appeared before the Aban Tribunal. The film follows former police and military personnel, survivors, eyewitnesses, doctors, experts and relatives of those killed as they testify about what they saw, experienced or learned from within state institutions. The significance of the defectors and whistleblowers lies in their ability to illuminate not only individual acts of violence but also the institutional structures, orders and chains of responsibility behind the crackdown.
Festival accounts of the documentary state that the Tribunal received testimony from 275 witnesses, including survivors, bereaved relatives, doctors, lawyers, experts and members of the security forces. No representative of the Islamic Republic appeared to answer the evidence.
A film structured around the Tribunal
Beyond the Lies moves between two connected timelines.
The first is November 2019: the internet blackout, official television coverage, state denial and the violence recorded in fragmentary citizen videos.
The second is the Tribunal process in 2021: witnesses giving evidence, lawyers questioning them and a public record gradually reconstructing what the blackout was intended to hide.
This parallel structure is fundamental to the film. Iranian state media is not presented merely as propaganda outside the evidentiary record. Mohammadi uses the authorities’ own images, broadcasts and language to expose contradictions, omissions and mechanisms of denial. These materials are then placed against eyewitness testimony, archival footage and evidence heard by the Tribunal.
The documentary therefore shows two competing processes of historical production. The state attempts to control the narrative by restricting communication, labelling protesters as rioters and suppressing independent evidence. The Tribunal reconstructs events through testimony, documentation and legal scrutiny.
The film’s title refers to this movement beyond the official lies and towards a record created by victims, witnesses and independent investigators.
At its centre are the families and survivors who chose to testify despite intimidation and danger. Through them, the film becomes not only an account of atrocities but also a study of how memory is preserved when a state attempts to erase it. As one London screening description put it, the film examines how power constructs narratives, conceals violence and tries to eliminate collective memory.
From Geneva to a Europe-wide screening campaign
The film’s European journey began with a preview screening in Geneva in March 2025, held during a session of the UN Human Rights Council. The setting placed the documentary directly within international debates about accountability for human-rights violations in Iran.
From there, Beyond the Lies developed into something more expansive than a conventional festival release. It began circulating through cinemas, human-rights festivals, community spaces, public discussions and solidarity events across Europe.
A major stage in that process came in January 2026, when Doxumentale launched the #AllEyesOnIran campaign. Against the background of renewed protests and restrictions on internet access in Iran, the organisers arranged screenings of the newly completed film across Europe and encouraged cinemas, institutions and community groups to organise additional events. The campaign argued that internet shutdowns should be understood not as technical disruptions but as instruments that make state violence harder to document and observe.
On 25 January 2026, the film was shown at the Kommunales Kino in Freiburg as part of that campaign. The cinema presented the documentary explicitly as an examination of how Iran’s nationwide internet shutdown enabled killings and systematic violations to occur beyond public view. It also highlighted the testimony given by survivors, victims’ relatives, doctors, lawyers, experts and other witnesses at the 2021 people’s tribunal in London.
The campaign included online access to the film and a recorded discussion with Mohammadi, human-rights lawyer Shadi Sadr and moderator Anna Mago. Organisers also made screening materials available to groups wishing to host their own events, turning the film into a decentralised tool for public education and solidarity.
During the Berlinale period in February 2026, Mohammadi participated in the “Films Change the World” programme at Berlin’s Rotes Rathaus. The event addressed the politics of documentary visibility: who is permitted to document history, which films reach audiences and how cinema can contribute to public action rather than simply representation.
On 8 March 2026, Beyond the Lies was screened at Top Kino in Vienna as part of the This Human World human-rights film programme. The festival’s presentation clearly described the film as the story of victims and witnesses seeking truth through a people’s tribunal outside Iran after being denied justice at home.
The same day, the film was shown at Casa do Comum in Lisbon as part of an International Women’s Day programme. The event framed the documentary as a record of the 2019 protests and the subsequent search for justice.
A further Vienna screening was held at the NordbahnSaal later in March, followed by a panel discussion. The organisers emphasised the film’s conclusion that the internet shutdown was not a temporary security measure but a central instrument of repression, used to conceal violence and control the public account of events.
The latest confirmed screening among the supplied sources took place at Palestine House in London on 8 June 2026, with Mohammadi present. The event described the film as a meditation on censorship, testimony, memory and the preservation of truth when violence is deliberately hidden.
Why the film is resonating now
The timing of the tour has given the documentary renewed urgency. European screenings have coincided with fresh international attention to protests, internet restrictions and violent repression in Iran. The parallels with November 2019 are difficult to miss: demonstrations spread, communications are interrupted, the state restricts the flow of information and uncertainty grows over the number and identity of those killed or detained.
The #AllEyesOnIran campaign explicitly drew this connection. Its organisers argued that showing Beyond the Lies during a new period of blackout and repression was a way to break enforced silence and remind international audiences what can happen when Iran is cut off from outside observation.
This contemporary relevance has helped the film reach audiences beyond those already familiar with the Aban Tribunal. For viewers trying to understand present-day events, it provides a detailed example of how a previous crackdown was implemented, concealed, documented and later examined through a civil-society accountability process.
The documentary also challenges a familiar pattern in international coverage of Iran, in which attention intensifies during a crisis and fades once protests leave the headlines. By following the Tribunal rather than ending with the massacre itself, the film shows that the consequences of repression continue long after demonstrations are suppressed. Families continue to search for answers, witnesses preserve evidence and civil society builds alternative mechanisms when official institutions fail.
Media attention to the film and its director
The documentary’s tour has been accompanied by growing European media coverage of Mahnaz Mohammadi and her wider body of work.
German newspaper Tagesspiegel placed Beyond the Lies in the context of Mohammadi’s fiction film Roya, which draws on her own experiences of imprisonment, isolation and torture. The article appeared amid renewed uncertainty about the scale of killings during more recent protests and asked whether Iranian films could illuminate events concealed by internet shutdowns.
The two films can be read as companion works. Roya examines what imprisonment and coercion do to an individual’s identity, while Beyond the Lies follows victims and witnesses as they resist state-imposed silence by speaking publicly before a tribunal.
A major profile in The Guardian in June 2026 broadened international attention to Mohammadi’s work and personal history. The article described her repeated arrests, imprisonment and torture, as well as her determination to continue film-making. Mohammadi compared herself to a soldier without a gun, armed instead with “a pen and a camera.”
Greek publication LiFO subsequently highlighted Beyond the Lies as her recent documentary about the violent suppression of the November 2019 protests and presented the camera as a central instrument of her resistance to censorship and state repression.
German-language coverage in Jungle World, Doxumentale’s own magazine, cinema listings and festival platforms has likewise situated the film at the intersection of documentary practice, exile, internet censorship and accountability for state violence.
More than a film about a massacre
The significance of Beyond the Lies lies in the fact that it does not portray victims simply as subjects of violence. It shows them as participants in a process of investigation and truth production.
The people who appear before the Aban Tribunal are not only recounting personal suffering. Collectively, their evidence challenges the state’s account, identifies patterns of violence and helps establish an enduring historical and legal record.
The Tribunal had no executive power and could not arrest suspects or enforce its judgment. Nevertheless, the film presents it as possessing legal, evidentiary and moral importance. People’s tribunals have historically been used where victims of mass atrocities are denied meaningful access to domestic or international justice. The Aban Tribunal adopted that model to document crimes, confront impunity and ensure that evidence would not disappear with the news cycle.
In that sense, the documentary is about more than November 2019. It is about what civil society can do when courts are closed, investigations are obstructed and the state controls the media.
The blackout made the crimes harder to see. The Tribunal made witnesses visible again.
Screening chronology
17 March 2025 — Geneva: preview screening during the UN Human Rights Council session.
8 March 2026 — Vienna: screening at Top Kino as part of This Human World.
8 March 2026 — Lisbon: screening at Casa do Comum for International Women’s Day.
March 2026 — Vienna: NordbahnSaal screening followed by a public discussion.
8 June 2026 — London: screening at Palestine House with Mahnaz Mohammadi.
As Beyond the Lies continues to circulate, its European tour is bringing the Aban Tribunal—and the voices of those who testified before it—to audiences seeking to understand not only how Iran’s protests were crushed, but also how survivors and civil society have fought to prevent the truth from being buried.
