by Gill Pringle
According to the UN, the past six weeks has seen as many as 14,000 people arrested in Iran during recent demonstrations, a watershed moment first ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in mid-September after being detained by the country’s morality police.
When FilmInk meets in Los Angeles with Abbasi – best known for his 2018 Oscar-nominated crime thriller Border – he is almost lost for words.
“We started working on this almost 15 years ago. It’s been a long journey, and we had no way of knowing what would happen and, frankly, nobody had a way of knowing what has happened in the past fortnight in Iran,” says the director whose film has since been selected as Denmark’s Oscar entry for the 95th Academy Awards.
“Our movie was never thought of as a political movie. We set out to do a film noir about a certain story and the layers of Iranian society and misogyny and the complexity of all that.
“But, in light of everything that’s happened in the past month and a half, this movie has taken on new meaning. And this is really out of my hands, whether I like it or not. It’s not the same movie as it was back in May when we premiered in Cannes or before and after. My intentions are still the same, but the context of the world has changed so drastically. Even I myself look at in a different way,” says Abbasi whose Persian-language film is loosely based on real-life serial killer Saeed Hanaei who targeted sex workers and killed 16 women from 2000 to 2001 in Iran’s holy city of Mashhad.
“My intention was not to make a serial killer movie; I wanted to make a movie about a serial killer society,” says Abbasi, now 41, who was a student in Tehran at the time of the murders. “It is about the deep-rooted misogyny within Iranian society, which is not specifically religious or political, but cultural. Misogyny everywhere breeds through the habits of people. In Iran, we have a tradition of hatred towards women, and it often rears its ugly head. In Saeed Hanaei’s story, this is present in its purest way. This makes it necessary to show different perspectives that demonstrate a range of opinions in Iranian society; those on his side and those who oppose him,” the filmmaker says.
Originally planning to film in Mashhad, Abbasi received push-back from the authorities, stringing him along, until he finally realised that it was never going to happen, thwarted by bureaucracy.
“I actually tried to make the move in Iran. I had dialogue with the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, as it’s called, and I was very honest about it. I was like, ‘okay, I don’t like the censorship and I’ll do a lot of stuff that I don’t agree with, but it’s the rule of the country and I would compromise if you let me shoot in Mashhad on location’.
“Obviously, I wanted to have the authenticity and also there’s a huge talent pool in Iran – but then you get into this Kafka-esque thing with like, ‘They never said no to us, which is their way of saying no’. It’s like. ‘You’ve got to get this guy to sign the papers, but he just went on holidays, so come back in two weeks…’ And then in two months, that guy is no longer there, so you have to start over,” he laughs.
Setting his sights on Turkey – doubling for Mashhad – was likewise shut down: “We spent a good amount of time and energy, with our limited budget, and then the Turkish government gets like a tap on the shoulder from the Iranians and they kicked us out. There’s been other reasons this took a while, other than me being a bit slow.
“This was really difficult. Not least the financial stuff. I mean, there are no funds for Persian language movies, so there’s like 40 pieces of financing from different film funds in Europe and, putting that together and then dealing with COVID and political uncertainties of different places,” says Abbasi who finally found a safe shooting haven in Jordan.
Deciding to depict a fictional female journalist investigating the serial killer, Abbasi spent five years searching for the right actress to portray this character of Rahimi, with the help of his casting director Zar Amir Ebrahimi.
Together, they would see more than 500 actresses for the part before their Iranian leading lady abruptly pulled out at the last minute.
“I had a very specific idea and then we found the right actress and I’m still angry at her because I think she’s talented but when we found her, I started adapting the script to her,” he recalls in frustration.
“And then she came in for the costume make-up test. I wasn’t there at the time, but I was looking at her picture afterwards, thinking, ‘Why is she so sad?’ And the producers were like ‘Oh, she’s getting into character’. And I was like, ‘No, it’s not that’. And then she was like, ‘Oh, can I have a wig when I’m doing the scene without a headscarf?’
“And just to put this into context – as a professional actor in Iran, if you do a scene where either you or any other actor in the scene, does not have a headscarf, then most definitely the person who shows the hair is banned from working indefinitely and even maybe you as the actor playing the opposite would also be banned,” he cringes.
“I know it sounds absurd. It’s like Monty Python, but that’s the law of the country, so that’s what she asked for. But I was like, there is so much other stuff you could be thinking about and then she was like ‘Oh, where it says t-shirt in the script, can I have long sleeves?’ And then there came a point when I was like, ‘Okay, we need to have a real conversation, and I told her, ‘Look, I can give you the fucking wig but there are 200 other problems in this movie, and the wig is going to be the least of your problems when it comes out’,” he recalls describing how, at that point, she quit.
“All I saw was black. I didn’t see any possibilities, nor was I grateful that Zar was there. I was just angry,” says Abbasi whose casting director, Zar Amir Ebrahimi [below], would reveal herself to be an actress, not only saving the day – but also going on to win the Best Actress award at Cannes.
“I didn’t want to do a movie about women rights or a feminist movie, but from the very beginning when I just read the script, for me this movie was about all these women – more than the serial killer. Like even the wife, for me is a very important character in this movie. All these women have their own story,” muses Ebrahimi.
“And in this character, Rahimi, maybe today with all the events happening in Iran, she is getting even more attention. She is a fictionalised character based on an actual journalist, although I never talked to her. I didn’t want to get influenced by her, although she is the hero.
“But now, it’s amazing because I’m starting to watch this movie in another way – a different way. And I feel that there are many Rahimis in Iran; in the streets of Iran every day. They’re risking their life for freedom and for their rights and not only for themselves, but for men and women,” says the Iranian actress/casting director.
As Holy Spider rides the wave of unrest in Iran, Abbasi says, “it’s insane what is happening in Iran – and also so incredible. I am lost for words. It’s been like that for 40 days. I’m a cynical person – every time there’s been something in that region, like the Arab Spring or the Green Wave, but this is different. And every day, there are pictures that I never thought I would ever see in my own lifetime.”
Too dangerous for Abbasi and Ebrahimi to return to Iran right now, likewise their Iranian leading man Mehdi Bajestani – who plays serial killer Saeed – who has been placed in hiding outside of Iran.
“It wouldn’t be good for him to go back right now along with some other people,” explains Abbasi. “This Iranian government, they’re clumsy in their sort of brutality. Our editor got a court summons. I don’t want to name other people or add to all this, but some people that I was expecting to get a lot of heat didn’t, and some random people did. I think they’ve got bigger problems than our film right now,” he says.
