cate Blanchett had told us when a few months ago we had interviewed her for Tar: “I have decided to join my voice athe campaign against death sentences in Iran thinking about young Iranians who keep alive the names of executed people so that they don’t disappear, so that they remain among us as human beings, don’t become numbers or statistics. An Iranian friend asked me to participateI followed his directions. In this world we all have a limited amount of public attention and we can decide how to use it: sell lingerie or talk about the abuses that happen every day in Iran. I’m not saying it contemptuously, but it’s like this: we have to choose ».
Cate Blanchett has chosen a side and, with his company Dirty Filmswhich she runs with her husband Andrew Upton and to Coco Fancini, has decided to support, carving out the role of executive producer, Shayda, the film by the Iranian-Australian director former student of Abbas Kiarostami, Noora Niasari.
Blanchett together with Niasari ea Zar Amir Ebrahimi, star of the film and winner of the award for best actress in Cannes in 2022 with Holy Spiderwill be on stage in Piazza Grande for the closing event of the Locarno film festival on August 12th.
Czar Amir Ebrahimi and Cate Blanchett in Cannes, at the party for the Golden Globes. (Photo by Victor Boyko/Variety via Getty Images)
Shaydawinner of the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival tells the story of the journey towards freedom and the acquisition of rights by an Iranian woman who finds refuge in a shelter after emigrating to Australia. Shayda, Iranian in Australia in 1995, has an abusive husband. Her film introduces her to us in a scene where she explains to her six-year-old daughter what to do if her father tries to kidnap her.
An autobiographical film
The film, which starts from the personal experience of Niasari’s mother, addresses the issue of strict moral codes of Iranian culture even outside the borders. Although far from Iran, Shayda is immersed in that world: the small Persian circle in Brisbane is not on his sidewhile her mother on the phone from Tehran begs her to give her husband a second chance.
Noora Niasari at the Sundance Film Festiva. (Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images)
Ebrahimi is not a random choice for the role of Shayda. The actress of Holy Spider in fact, she fled Iran in 2008after being jailed for a video that showed her having sex outside of marriage.
In the afternoon of August 12, before the screening of the film, will be held at Cinema GranRex a Public Conversation, where the director Noora Niasari and the actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi will dialogue with the audience around the theme “Iranian women and Iranian cinema”moderated by Cate Blanchett.
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