A journeyman point guard who’s played all over the globe, Kevin Sheppard makes an unlikely ambassador. But when he takes a job playing for Iran’s A.S. Shiraz, the Virgin Islander becomes one of the few U.S. citizens allowed to enter the little-understood country. Everyday Iranians, unsurprisingly, prove to be less hostile and more freethinking than their repressive government: A shopkeeper tells Sheppard about the time he smoked marijuana in Nashville, and our hero spends time with three young women who decry the culture of head scarves and arranged marriages. The doc’s technique of cutting between warm exchanges and the bellicose rhetoric of then-presidents Ahmadinejad and Bush wears thin with overuse, but the big-hearted Sheppard makes for an amiable tour guide.
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