Between 2000 and 2001, a seemingly normal family man murdered 16 women working as prostitutes in the holy city of Mashhad. summoned Saeed Haneibut the media baptized him without knowing his identity. ‘spider killer’for drawing the victims into his house, where he smothered them with a handkerchief covering their heads.
The case had a huge impact in the country, and at the time, Director Ali Abbasi He was still living there before deciding to go to Europe in search of creative freedom to pursue his film career. What impressed him the most was what happened after Hanei was arrested: Most of the people sided with him, thinking that he was doing a holy cleansing. To them, he was not a murderer, but a martyr of religion. he said he was actually trying to implement a fatwa, that is, the authorities were trying to make a statement in favor of his ‘mission’ and acknowledging its importance. Saeed was involved in the Iran-Iraq war and inwardly couldn’t bear to have his life reduced to an invisible citizen working in construction. He wanted to somehow transcend and have his faith and sacrifice recognized. Finally, after a turbulent trial, She was sentenced to death, but showed how religious fanaticism and misogyny go hand in hand in Iranian society. and embedded in institutions.
Abbasi would leave his country to study in Stockholm in 2002 and later settle in Denmark, where he developed his studies (although he retained dual citizenship). After the horror thriller ‘Shelley’ and that glorious rarity ‘Boundary’ (both registered in the fantasy genre), first tackles a story about the Iranian society in which he was born, ‘The sacred spider’ hits theaters this friday.
Of course, he was always aware that he couldn’t shoot there, that the authorities wouldn’t allow it because of the critical political and social blame involved in his script. Despite everything she tried, she was never told yes or no. So he looked for other possibilities to avoid problems. He tried Turkey first, but the Iranian government found out about this and fired his team while they were looking for a place. Thus, it was filmed in Jordan, where Mashhad was finally able to recreate his bowels, as the atmosphere of the city would be another character in the movie. In fact, the title ‘Holy Spider’ refers not only to the nickname of the killer, but also to the manner in which the spider itself is deployed. Mashhad, the second largest holy city in the world and the epicenter of Ali Rıza’s holy mosquetheir webs stretching out to the rest of the population like a spider web.
television star
As with any ‘thriller’, an investigation is needed alongside the murderer, but Abassi didn’t want it used. Therefore, by deciding that Saeed’s adversary was precisely a woman (journalist), she further emphasized the state of constant vulnerability they have in the country, marked by the constantly questioned and suffocating oppression. In the movie, Rahimi’s character was fired from her newspaper for condemning her boss’s systematic harassment, but she was found guilty. In real life, the actress who played him, Tsar Amir-EbrahimiHe had to face a similar situation. She was a TV star in Iran when a sexually explicit video was leaked and was forced to flee the country and seek refuge in France. So, in a way, there’s a mirror between fiction and reality when it comes to uncovering how misogynistic havoc against women is perpetuated, and that’s why the actress’s rendition is so compelling, close, and profound. His work has been recognized in the past Cannes Film Festival where he received the Palme d’Or for this role.
However, neither Zar Amir-Ebrahimi nor Abbasi could have imagined that the film would have such a deep current resonance. Its premiere coincided with the murder of Mahsa Amini.She died after being tortured and beaten by the morality police for not wearing a headscarf. This fact caused a wave of protests both within the country and internationally, and according to the latest news, the regime announced that it would dismantle this oppressive structure and that the law requiring women to wear the headscarf would be revised. But censorship does not refer. Same Range Actress Taraneh Alidoosti arrested in TehranWhat we can see in the Oscar-winning movie “seller”From Asgard Farhadi for her Instagram account posts against the brutal repression of the regime.
In the middle of this vortex, ‘Holy spider’ Besides being a very perfect, dark, frightening ‘thriller’, it turns into a powerful denouncement weapon that brings us closer to a reality where women are murdered, harassed, humiliated and an intolerable machismo is rampant in society. subject to cancellation.