Dancing Ledge, a Fremantle company, is producing a feature length documentary to accompany its four-part BBC drama about the six-year ordeal of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe – a British-Iranian dual national held in Tehran – and the campaign by her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, to bring her home.
With exclusive access to the couple, as well as other former hostages – Anoosheh Ashoori and his daughter Elika Ashoori, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Jason Rezaian and key political decision-makers – Prisoner 951: The Hostages’ Story offers a rare look at the toll of being used as leverage in political negotiations between states.
The film explores how authoritarian regimes are increasingly using foreign nationals as geopolitical bargaining chips. Through the lens of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s six-year imprisonment in Iran, the film examines the wider pattern of wrongful detention, the international failure to prevent it, and the hidden costs to families, diplomacy, and justice.
Produced by Dancing Ledge Productions, the documentary will accompany a major new BBC factual drama – Prisoner 951 – based on the forthcoming book, A Yard of Sky, written by Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe and Richard Ratcliffe.
What began as a family holiday in 2016 became a life-altering nightmare when Nazanin was detained at the airport in Iran and separated from her 22-month-old daughter, Gabriella. Over the course of her imprisonment, she endured solitary confinement, psychological torment, and staged hunger strikes in a desperate fight for justice.
Her case dominated headlines but now she tells her story in her own words. The film traces the years of absence and advocacy, culminating in the moment Nazanin was finally reunited with Gabriella, then seven years old, in 2022.
The film explores how Nazanin’s detention was entangled in decades-old financial disputes between the UK and Iran, and questions how for years the British government failed to secure her release. It documents the grassroots movement that helped force political action, including Richard’s 21-day hunger strike outside the Foreign Office in 2021.
Prisoner 951: The Hostages’ Story, (1×90′) was commissioned by the Documentaries dept, BBC Factual, and it’s produced by Fremantle’s Dancing Ledge Productions for BBC iPlayer and BBC Two. The Director is Erica Gornall, the Producer is Cassie Cornish-Trestrail and the Executive Producer is Fatima Salaria.
Fremantle is distributing the documentary internationally.
Photo credit: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori arrive at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, after they were freed from detention by Iranian authorities (Image: BBC/Leon Neal/Alamy)
Pippa Considine
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