Ms. Sadat and her crew say that just the fact of having made “A Letter to the President” — a feature film made to high standards under difficult circumstances — feels like a victory. But the real payoff is the reaction to the slap, and the idea that they are succeeding in getting a male-dominated society to empathize with a working woman.

“We have always had an oppressor, and an oppressed, but we have had little discussion of the environment in which the accused lives in,” Ms. Sadat said.

By the accused, she means her protagonist — Suraya, the senior police detective, who ends up accidentally killing her husband while defending herself from another violent outburst. The letter to the president of the movie’s title is hers; she is writing from prison, where she has landed on death row.

Suraya’s once-happy marriage grew sour when the demands of her work in a conservative society started raising her husband’s suspicions at home. Her father-in-law, whose shady business partners feel the pressure of Suraya’s investigations, kept appealing to his son’s honor to restrict her movements and keep her at home.