Tsar Amir Ebrahimi, actress of “Shayda” and “Tatami”, from Tehran to Locarno and Venice

“THECinema allowed me to connect with the whole world». Tsar Amir Ebrahimi, stage actress in Tehran, then actress and director in Parisbut also editor, casting director, producer, her history in cinema sees it like this.

A way of salvation, an unforeseen destiny, an uncontrollable passion. Protagonist of Tehran Taboo in 2017, in 2022 she won the best actress award in Cannes with Holy Spider by Ali Abbasi in which she played a detective willing to do anything to catch a serial killer of women.

Shaydain which she is a woman on the run from an abusive husband, film directed by Noora Niasari and produced by Cate Blanchett, premiered at Sundance and then at Locarno Film Festival, and it is Australia’s Oscar nomination.

In Locarno Zar, as a jurorwas able to appeal to the «total knowledge of the cinema machine acquired in recent years, and not only from a technical point of view. I am an immigrant in France, when I arrived in Paris I had to learn to understand different languages ​​and cultures and to watch all the cinema in the world. It was my toolbox. I don’t know if this helps to rate the films better, it definitely allows you to look at the films in a different way.

When I interviewed Cate Blanchett a few months ago, she told me that the reason she had decided to participate in the campaign against death sentences in Iran was: «An Iranian friend asked me to participate, I followed her instructions». Was it about her?
I am very grateful to Cate and not only to her. Last year, when demonstrations began to spread in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini it was difficult to spread the news and let the world know what was happening. So we filmmakers in exile told ourselves that we had a duty to account for the courage of Iranian women. I’m not sure what the Iranian people are going through is clear to everyone, nor what the effect of the sanctions is, or what are the risks women are putting themselves in their struggle. Cate has made a valuable contribution, Iranian women are becoming a source of inspiration for the internal world. Cate then chose to produce Shayda and she felt seriously responsible for the film, she was on set every day, it helped a lot.

There are artists who are also political animals.
It’s something we have in our soul, Cate is an engaged person, in the choices she has made during her career her path can be clearly seen, she could have chosen more important films, perhaps earning more.

Tsar Amir Ebrahimi in Holy Spider

Even his path says a lot about the sometimes tortuous destinies of the artists: Holy Spider, the film that changed her life, came unexpectedly, she was only the casting director, until Ali Abbasi realized that no one else could play it except her
In my life there have been many more and much less, but the sum is all in all positive. Before Holy Spider was selected by the Cannes Film Festival I was desperate. Nothing worked, everything had taken much longer than expected, I had set up my production company in France, but Covid arrived soon after. We no longer worked, I was out of energy and I had even turned 40…. I wondered if it was worth all that effort, having put my whole life into work. I don’t have a husband, I don’t have children, I had wasted years learning the language in France, to enter that world. So I told myself that I had to enjoy life a little more, I had a plan: leave Paris, move to a small city, perhaps in contact with nature. Then Cannes changed everything, maybe it was my destiny not to have a normal life, a family. But in the end maybe my career, cinema and my production company are my children and I have to protect them. Some of my friends, caught up in my own discouragement, had meanwhile returned to Iran, France was too complicated for them, and if after 5 years you haven’t made it, give up. But they re-entered a catastrophe.

Does your production company only promote your own projects or others as well?
I arrived in France because I was prevented from working in Iran, but I couldn’t work because I didn’t know the language and because the profession is closed. So I learned how to edit and started producing, making and selling small documentaries for the BBC. This gave me the motivation to create my own company. And since I had my own film project, Honor of Persia, and no one believed it, so I said, “I’ll do it.” And now I want to help others like me. If France doesn’t give us the money, I’m looking for it all over the world, I still have good contacts. To do this job you have to be patient, resistant and fighter. And the more multitasking you are, the better. My brain and my life work like this. Others think you have to specialize.

To Venice door Tatami co-directed with Israeli director Guy Nattiv: a choice with a political content?
I never wonder what origin the director of a film is from. And it was Guy who came looking for me. I thought I was just going to play it. But since the dialogue on the script was fruitful Guy asked me to co-direct. Sure, it will turn out to be a political choice in the end, but that wasn’t the premise. And I know that in choosing there is a risk and that for this I will be criticized all over the world. But I think our two peoples, Iranian and Israeli, share a lot, even if they don’t suffer in Israel as much as we suffer in Iran. The film tells the story of an athlete who is under pressure because her fate will perhaps put her against an Israeli opponent and, in that case, the Iranian government would force her to abandon the competition. But she decides to continue and to resist, even if her family, which is in Iran, is at risk because of her. To be free to change we all have to take risks, I have taken risks, as well as for myself, also for my family and for my friends who work with me from Tehran. But if we don’t, nothing will ever change.

Then there will be Reading Lolita in Tehran in which she stars alongside Golshifteh Farahani, an Iranian exile like her, another film directed by an Israeli…
It will be a small role, but I wanted to work with Goldshifteh, who is like a sister to me. We’ve known each other since we left Iran, but we’ve never worked together. I haven’t read the book, but I know the story of its international success. The film, through the story of the relationship between the teacher and her students, tells the story of Iran, what happened after the revolution, the arrival of the reformists and then the steps backwards, and above all it tells how women have resisted and how the power has tried to erase them.

How did your friendship with Golshifteh come about?
I arrived in France a few months before her (Zar had to leave Iran because of an intimate video released by an ex-boyfriend. He risked prison, corporal punishment and a ban on working, Golshifteh for working in French and American films and having posed for a French magazine, ed) it was our destiny to meet again and to share such a similar story. You starred in an American film (Body of Lies with Leonardo DiCaprio, ed), but no one had told her she couldn’t do it, and in the end that choice was judged as an act of espionage. And for her, as for me, the ban on working in Iran was triggered. In France we have been a source of inspiration for each other, we have strengthened each other. And we have never competed. She was an instant star and held my hand through difficult times. When, in front of her, on a public occasion someone asked me who I was, I replied that I didn’t know, that “I worked in the cinema”. Then Golshifteh took me aside and scolded me: “Never say such a thing again, you are an actress.” I have never forgotten it since. Even if I don’t always work as an actress, if I do other things, I feel that, at the bottom of everything, I am and that no one can ever take it away from me.

Is yours a solid community even if it is scattered around the world?
We are many, with similar stories, exiles, people who have lost their families, who have had loved ones killed. We should hate our country, but instead we are very attached to our roots, we don’t cut them off. When you leave because you have no choice, you suffer, you hate the place you’re leaving, but we continue to love it. I believe it is the power of the East. We are less individualistic, we feel like a community.

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