Brian Gilbert · 1991 · exile

Brian Gilbert's 1991 film of Betty Mahmoody's memoir. On a promised two-week visit to her husband's family in Tehran, an American woman finds herself and her daughter trapped in Iran, their passports taken. After months of captivity she gambles on smugglers, who lead them over the snowbound mountains of the northwest and across the Turkish border to the embassy in Ankara.

1. 1
   Tehran

   Betty Mahmoody and her small daughter Mahtob come to Tehran for a two-week family visit; then her husband announces they are never leaving, and confiscates their passports, trapping them in a foreign country.

2. 2
   Northwestern Iran

   After months of house-bound captivity, Betty makes contact with a smuggling network that moves her and Mahtob quietly up toward the Kurdish mountains of Iran's northwest, away from Tehran's watchers.

3. 3
   The Turkish border

   Smugglers take mother and daughter over the snowbound frontier ranges on horseback and on foot, a freezing night crossing into Turkey with rebels and border patrols on every side.

4. 4
   Ankara

   Across the mountains they reach a town and then the long road to Ankara, and the gates of the American embassy - and the flight home Betty was told she would never take.