The Iran Job is a documentary directed by Till Schauder about Kevin Sheppard, a professional American basketball player, as he plays in Shiraz, Iran for the A.S. Shiraz team (since renamed B.A Shiraz BC) in the Iranian Super League. The documentary was filmed in Iran in the winter of 2008-2009, a few months before the uprising of Iran's Green Movement.
Director: Till Schauder
Stars: Kevin Sheppard
Christiane Amanpour, Gloria Steinem, Maz Jobrani, Karim Sadjadpour, and Executive Producer Abigail Disney have all expressed support for The Iran Job. In December 2011 the film was invited to a private, work-in-progress screening at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. moderated by Karim Sadjadpour.
On January 9, 2012 The Iran Job completed a 50-day crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter that raised over $100,000. During its Kickstarter campaign, the film received press coverage from CNN International (on two occasions: a print article on December 23, 2011 and a TV interview that broadcast on January 5, 2012), The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, PBS FRONTLINE's Tehran Bureau, and IFP's Filmmaker Magazine. Since the completion of its Kickstarter campaign, the film has received press from PBS' P.O.V. blog.
The Iran Job follows American basketball player Kevin Sheppard as he accepts a job to play in one of the world's most feared countries: Iran. With tensions running high between Iran and the West, Kevin tries to separate sports from politics only to find that politics is impossible to escape in Iran. Along the way he forms an unlikely alliance with three outspoken Iranian women. Thanks to these women, his apartment turns into an oasis of free speech, where they discuss everything from politics to religion to gender roles. Kevin's season in Iran culminates in something much bigger than basketball: the uprising and subsequent suppression of Iran's reformist Green Movement - a powerful prelude to the sweeping changes across the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring.
