Actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi, the star of Ali Abbas’s film Les Nuits de Mashhad, received the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. The prize awarded to an actor and a director is all the more irritating when you watch his story.
At the 75th Cannes Film Festival, Iranian actor and director Zar Amir Ebrahim was blessed for his portrayal of a woman. Nights of Mashhad (Or Holy Spider) of GeorgiaAli AbbasA Swedish director of Iranian descent who won the Un Certain Regard Prize four years ago Boundary.
The Nights of Mashhad is a thriller for which Ali Abbas continues to link his Iranian origins to the story of Saeed Hanai, author of a series of feminists that has shaken public opinion in the holy city of Mashhad.
Through this tragic case, for which the Iranian press of Said Hanai nicknamed the Spider, Ali Abbas reports on the dark but not-so-hidden part of the treatment of women in Iranian society.
His versatile views and staging at human heights make him an organic and moving noir thriller as the film follows the trajectory of Said Hanai, a war veteran who feels he has a divine mission to “cleanse the city of sin.” The murder of a prostitute and the fictional journalist Rahim, torn between his responsibilities and beliefs.
Zar Amir Ebrahimi received the prize for this role of a journalist for his interpretation of a woman. An honor that deeply moved the actor and director who experienced the virginity of Iranian society, to whom Ali Abbas questions in all its complexity through the story of the Nights of Mashhad.
A symbolic price for this actor who had to leave Iran
Born in Tehran in 1981, Zar Amir Ebrahim has a busy career, appearing in the films of many Iranian directors such as Mohammad Nourizadi, Mojtaba Rai, Abolfazl Jalili and Abbas Kiarostami, but also in the theater.
But it was his participation in the Komakam Kon and Nargess series that enabled him to gain notoriety and recognition from critics and the public. The call unfortunately turns out to be in this context that he is associated with a sextet scandal where he finds himself questioning his ex-fiancé with whom he has divorced.
This scandal not only put the actor in great danger, in the face of social ostracism and eyelash extensions, but also ruined his career in Iran. The films he made at the time and which he had released were returned to other actors in his place. He was also banned from making new films or appearing on television.
Zar Amir Ebrahimi explained in an interview with AlloCiné at the Cannes Film Festival that he used his traumatic personal experience for this role as a journalist facing the misogyny of the country:
“I had a bit of a strange life in Iran. What made me leave Iran was still a serious story. It’s a very special story. I’ve had this experience of insult, of insult. “The latter were afraid of scandal, they no longer want to work with you and do not want to be involved in such a story. It may create problems for the government.”
Zar Amir Ibrahim had to flee Iran in 2008 and take refuge in France, a country where he can continue his profession and which he honored in his speech of thanks after receiving a prize for his interpretation of a woman. The actor also caught the eye of Golshifteh Farahan, another Iranian actor who also fled Iran due to the threat of a travel ban when he was planning to shoot in Hollywood in 2008.
Therefore, the prize for interpreting a woman is stronger for Zar Amir Ibrahim, because of his personal experience in responding to the conspiracy of the nights of Mashhad:
“Tonight I feel like I had a very long journey here, before coming to this stage. It’s a wonderful story, but one that included humiliation despite my love for cinema. It was great loneliness, but thankfully there were movies. There was darkness. But the cinema was for that. You ran away. And now I’m in front of you. Hello cinema. He saved my life and will save many.
Les Nuits de Mashhad is about women, their bodies, it is a film full of hatred, hands, feet, breasts, sex, everything that you can not show in Iran. Thank you Ali Abbas for being so crazy and for being so generous. Thank you for this achievement, for this powerful art. “
Les Nuits de Mashhad will be released in French cinemas on July 13, 2022.
Source: allocine
Emily Jhon is a product and service reviewer at Gossipify, known for her honest evaluations and thorough analysis. With a background in marketing and consumer research, she offers valuable insights to readers. She has been writing for Gossipify for several years and has a degree in Marketing and Consumer Research from the University of Oxford.
