Inside the Iranian Uprising hides a question in its title. How can it be possible to get inside a totalitarian regime, amid a brutal crackdown on protesters, activists and journalists, to tell the story of what has happened over the past nine months in Iran?
It opens with a powerful montage of the sorts of clips that are posted to social media all the time, around the world, of teenagers on a beach, at a wedding, blowing bubbles in the kitchen, swimming, singing, dancing. All of these young people are dead. As the BBC has been banned from working inside Iran, it has instead gathered footage shot mostly by young Iranians on their smartphones and worked with activists and exiles to verify more than 100 hours of clips. In this way, it attempts to piece together what happened after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody, which led to mass protests across the country.
