Metrograph

Zar Amir took home a Best Actress Award from the 2022 Cannes Film Festival for her steely performance in Abbasi’s nerve-rattling thriller, in which she plays a Tehran journalist, Arezoo Rahimi, investigating the story of an at-large serial murderer in the holy city of Mashhad who has been preying on the city’s streetwalkers. Based on the real case of “Spider Killer” Saeed Hanaei, who framed his rampage as a moral crusade, Abbasi’s film is interested not only in the psychology of its culprit but in the everyday misogyny of the society that nurtured him in its bosom—and, it might be mentioned, almost destroyed Amir’s career—a chauvinism that is gallingly apparent in the course of Rahimi’s research into the case.

Distributor: Utopia

Q&A with Zar Amir moderated by Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh on Saturday, September 27th