A Woman Without a Name

Behind the solid concrete walls of the women's prison Gharchak in Iran's capital, Tehran, four young women open the door to their lives and innermost thoughts. They reveal their downfall into substance abuse and violent crime, which led to a life behind bars. All four are sentenced to several years of imprisonment for assault and murder. Their children play on the grey stone floor in the prison, where the women's only contact to the outside world is through a pay phone. Violence, coercion, abuse and sexual assaults were the recurring reasons why the young women broke with the outside world's expectations of proper female behavior – and sacrificed their lives in the process.