Zar Amir Ebrahimi and Arash Ashtiani as Rahimi and Sharifi in Holy Spider.
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Zar Amir Ebrahimi and Arash Ashtiani as Rahimi and Sharifi in Holy Spider.
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holy spider is about a serial killer. The film tells the story of a man who hunts down prostitutes because he believes his God-given mission is to “wage a holy war against the bad guys”.
The film was released at a time of increasing state violence against civilians, especially women, in Iran. And it puts Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi in a complicated position.
“It’s a place of contradiction for me,” he told NPR. Abbasi is not interested in making a live political drama and he is wary of looking opportunistic. “But I can’t completely quit it,” he said.
Making a “Persian Noir”
Abbasi was a university student in Tehran when first hearing about the real case inspired holy spider. As a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, Saeed Hanaei is known as the “Spider Killer” when he murdered 16 women between 2000 and 2001.
The systematic murders took place in Mashhad, the hometown of one of the largest and most sacred Shia shrines in the world. The city attracts millions of religious pilgrims each year. At the time, Iran was considered to be in a period of reform. President Mohammad Khatami had been elected three years earlier, in a landslide, after campaigning on the promise of more freedom and democracy. Although many Iranians hope his leadership will bring about meaningful change, hardliners lashed out at political change. High unemployment and poverty rates still popular.
A month after Khatami was re-elected to a second term in June 2001, Hanaei was arrested. Although he admitted to the murders during the trial, he ended up gaining sympathy from an ultra-conservative section of the population who saw him as a hero. His trial caused a frenzy in the media, both domestically and international.
Mehdi Bajestani as Saeed Hanaei in Holy Spider.
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Mehdi Bajestani as Saeed Hanaei in Holy Spider.
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The public reaction to the murders – and the amount of time it took authorities to catch the killer – left a deep impression on Abbasi. “I really felt that there was an outrage within me,” the screenwriter-director told NPR. “About these women and their fate and how they are treated by the media and how they are treated by others.”
Abbasi’s film follows a journalist named Rahimi, played by Zar Amir Ebrahimi, as she investigates a serial killer in the holy city. Played by Mehdi Bajestani, Saeed is by day a local construction worker. At night, he roams the streets, targeting prostitutes to cleanse the streets of sins. As he watched the case, Rahimi quickly realized that investigation – and justice – could be hindered by local authorities because they were turning a blind eye.
Abbasi said filmmaking years after the actual test is difficult to research. Documentation was not readily available and Hanaei’s family was difficult to access, so the story eventually shifts from a specific true crime drama to a fictional one, what Abbasi describes as a “Persian crime” “.
“So that’s when I switched from, ‘Okay, let’s do the story about Saeed Hanaei,’ to ‘Let’s make the story about the society that nurtured or developed a Saeed Hanaei type,’” he said. .
Acceptance and consequences
Iran has been in the spotlight ever since Protest broke out in September, after the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman of Iranian descent while she was in the custody of the ethics police. Mahsa Amini – known to his family as the Kurd, Jina – was accused of wearing a headscarf improperly. Protests, often led by women, have continued across the country and have encountered deadly force by the government.
Abbasi and his cast have since used screenings and premieres as an opportunity to raise awareness for the plight of the Iranian people. At the Cannes Film Festival premiere in May, holy spider received a standing ovation, and Ebrahimi won the film festival’s Best Actress award. And in December, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences includes holy spider above it Shortlist for Best International Feature Film of 2023.
But a few Western critics were troubled by the graphic scenes shows sex workers being brutally strangled with their own headscarves. Others criticized what they saw as the film’s needlessly erotic images of the female body.
Along with protesters, Ali Abbasi and Zar Amir Ebrahimi attend holy spider Premiere in the UK during the 66th BFI London Film Festival on 8 October 2022 in London.
Stuart C. Wilson/Getty image for BFI
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Stuart C. Wilson/Getty image for BFI
Along with protesters, Ali Abbasi and Zar Amir Ebrahimi attend holy spider Premiere in the UK during the 66th BFI London Film Festival on 8 October 2022 in London.
Stuart C. Wilson/Getty image for BFI
“You know, especially some Anglo-American critics, they really feel that this is an exploitative, misogynistic film,” admitted Abbasi. He feels that criticism of the film is not only a bit outdated, but also lacks nuance and consideration in terms of film history and Iran’s censorship.
“For 50 years, the female body was completely absent from Iranian films. You know, women are just talking heads – literally the heads that can talk, cry, laugh in movies. Iran,” said Abbasi, with a hint of pomp. (The previous revolution took place 43 years ago.) “They showed scenes of women sleeping in headscarves in their homes. That never happens, even if you’re a super religious family. .”
So for a project like this, which was filmed in Jordan, Abbasi said an honest role needed to make the female body visible. “And that has to do with every aspect of it – if it’s violence, if it’s sex, if it’s the nail polish on Rahimi’s toes – take those veils off and show it as it is. inherent.”
not surprised, holy spider was also the target of intense negative publicity from Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which threatened revenge against those who worked on the film. The director is currently living in exile. “I couldn’t go back to Iran because I thought I could be arrested immediately,” he said. “So here’s what I’m trying to do as best I can for a reason.”
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A parallel of challenge
Around the same time when Amini was killed, in the fall of 2022, holy spider to international theaters. Suddenly, Abbasi said, his film was read very specifically by both audiences and critics in the context of her death and its aftermath.
Many Iranians – to Abbasi’s surprise – reacted positively to the film. Observers on social media, he said, have drawn parallels between Saeed’s violent hatred of the character and Iranians’ hooligan repression. basic paramilitary force.
“I’ve read a lot of comments on Twitter, for example, where people say, this is the real face of the Islamic Republic and this is who they really are,” said Abbasi.
“There is a common sense of defiance [where] it’s like the whole country – an entire people – is defying the law, defying the culture, defying the bullets, defying the army, defying the leader. I think they find this challenge in our film because our film is doing the same thing,” he continued, the taboos they established. We just, like, , blow into it. And I think people understand that. Like, emotionally, they understand that, you know?”
‘Saint Spider’ will be available to stream in February 2023.
