Heart-warming, inspiring... or just a little bit scary?

Last weekend New Zealand film director Faramarz Beheshti premiered one of the most remarkable - and indeed unlikely - sports documentaries, perhaps ever. Even before the premier it was gaining some headines, and since its launch it has already been selected for the Milan Film Festival, and is being hailed by some as "the biggest sports documentary in the world" this year.

The subject of the film is women's rugby. In Iran.

There is a short trailer for the film - Salam Rugby - on imdb. Its taken Faramarz over three years to produce and shows how - despite the barriers - girls across this large, scary, male-dominated country have taken to this alien, and worse still western, sport. Apparently over 1,000 girls and women play the game (or did at the time the documentary was made), which meant that they were able to take part in the 2009 Asian Sevens championship in Thailand where they finished an impressive 9th out of 14.

Unfortunately, since the documentary was filmed (but hopefully not because of it) things have gone backwards for the game. Two of the teams featured no longer exist - thanks apparently to the Interior Ministry rather than a loss of players - and all male coaches, who had been coaching womens teams and also featured in the documentary, have now been banned from coaching women. There is no news about the fate of any of the players, but the lady within the Iran RFU who was responsible for promoting the game and getting the national team to the Asian Sevens last year was removed from her post shortly after the tournament. There was no Iranian team at this year's tournament in China, but a team has turned up today at a small sevens competition in Cortina, Italy so all may not be lost.

Needless to say there is no news about the film being shown anywhere in the UK. A cinema release is a bit unlikely, but its the sort of thing that the likes of BBC4 picks up on so its not impossible that we'll get a chance to see it.