HOLY SPIDER
O.V. Farsi, English and Spanish subtitles
Based on the case of a serial killer of women in Iran who was glorified by the country's most fundamentalist sector, Ali Abbasi makes a brutal thriller that draws on the suspense of the most disturbing Hitchcock, the nocturnal atmospheres of Michael Mann's urban noirs and the inherent pessimism of David Fincher's films. Winner of the Best Actress Award at the last Cannes Film Festival, Zar Amir Ebrahimi plays the journalist who investigates the murders in the face of the ineffectiveness of a system complicit towards male violence. Danish candidate for the Oscar, this relentless look at the double standards of his home country has earned the director of Border (2018) the condemnation of the Iranian authorities, who have compared Holy Spider to the Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
Direction: Ali Abbasi
Screenplay: Ali Abbasi, Afshin Kamran Bahrami
Cinematografy: Nadim Carlsen
Editing: Olivia Neergaard-Holm
Music: Martin Dirkov
Cast: Zaar Amir Ebrahimi, Mehdi Bajestani, Arash Ashtiani, Nima Akbarpour, Sara Fazilat, Sima Seyed, Alice Rahimi, M. Ali Nazarian
Production: Sol Bondy, Jacob Jarek
Production company: ONE TWO FilmsProfile Pictures, Why Not Productions, Nordisk Film Production AB
Distributor: Karma Films
World sales: Wild Bunch International
Director and screenwriter Ali Abbasi was born in 1981 in Iran, where he studied at the Tehran Polytechnic University before moving to Europe to graduate from the National Film School of Denmark. M for Markus was his short film debut released in 2011. Border, inspired by the eponymous novel of the Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist, won the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes in 2018. Holy Spider is Abbasi’s latest work, which was nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes and was granted the Best Actress Award in recognition of Zar Amir Ebrahimi’s work.
