by Abhi Parasher
“We don’t get to see life after escape too much. We don’t get to see what it is like to leave a violent situation, but that violent situation not leaving you…”
At 5 years old, Noora Niasari escaped a turbulent family situation with her mother, seeking refuge in a women’s shelter. A couple of decades on, Niasari has transformed their tale of hope and resilience into the Sundance-winning film, Shayda.
“Sometimes, the things that happen in real life aren’t really believable on a cinema screen,” Niasari explains. “The first draft of the screenplay was very close to our experience; it was pretty much an adaptation of my mother’s unpublished memoir. Over the three years I worked on the screenplay, I realised that it was finding its cinematic potential beyond our experience.”
Shayda follows a young Iranian mother and her six-year-old daughter, who find refuge during the two weeks of the Iranian New Year (Nowruz).
Niasari’s objective was never a straightforward retelling of her life, granting her the freedom to blend her experiences into the creation of multi-dimensional characters like Hossein (portrayed by Osamah Sami).
“The goal was the create a great film rather than to accurately represent exactly what happened to us,” Niasari explains. “For example, Hossein’s character is very different from my father. It was by far the most difficult to write because having lived through this, I could have been holding on to a lot of anger or resentment and I could have wanted revenge by showing my father in a particular way. As a fictional character, I could see what was needed of the character in the film to give the audience a satisfying resolution. I was lucky to work with Osamah to bring those nuances out.”
For Sami and Niasari, the character work began early on in the development process.
“When the script came to me in my inbox, I read it back to front immediately,” shares Sami, who himself co-wrote his breakout hit Ali’s Wedding. “I ended up writing a 20-page essay on the character, outlining what resonated with me and all the different elements in the story I connected with. Once I knew I had that freedom to explore, Noora and I got to work.”
This involved dissecting aspects of the character that resonated organically with Sami, like embodying the role of a father, alongside aspects that didn’t come as naturally, particularly Hossein’s physicality.
“I gained about a dozen kilos over the course of six weeks,” Sami says. “I was having doughnuts for breakfast and Maccas all day long. After a couple of weeks, I started to get that lethargic feeling in me, which is what I wanted for the character.”
In Niasari’s words, Sami “went to the next level” when it came to understanding Hossein’s inner workings.
“I travelled to Iran on my own,” Sami tells us. “I spent three weeks there, going to the Mosque daily, hanging out in Tehran and getting into taxis just to talk to the drivers about different topics. I didn’t have to tell them I was an actor, or that I was from Australia. I would just sit there and talk to them about relationships. They were great conversations because I could just be someone else in that period.”
While Niasari views Shayda as an Australian film, she acknowledges the influence of her Iranian upbringing, citing the rich poetry and cinema that shaped her.
“There is so much poetry in Iranian films,” Niasari says. “It’s interesting being a diaspora filmmaker because I am neither here nor there. I’ve always seen Shayda as an Australian film, but I’m obviously really inspired by Iranian art, from cinema to literature. I’ve always been inspired by the pacing in Iranian cinema and how it portrays the beauty of everyday life, the moments in everyday life and the ability to let something play out in a frame. That pacing really captures me because it allows the silences to speak volumes. That’s something I was really drawn to.”
Mastering the intricate pacing in Shayda was a taxing process for Niasari, compelling her to confront some of the most challenging decisions that filmmakers must grapple with.
“The original rough cut was 3 hours long, so I had to kill a lot of my babies,” she explains. “I see these reviews where people are saying ‘2 hours is a bit too long’ and all I think is, ‘you have no idea how hard it was to cut an hour’. It was challenging because that hour we cut was still high quality with incredible performances. Some of the scenes I still think about because I really do miss them. But, at the end of the day, you’re rewriting the film in the edit, and you need to let go of your attachment to them.”
That “mad struggle” as Niasari describes it, paid off as Shayda took film festivals by storm, notably securing the Audience Award at Sundance and earning the honour of being chosen as Australia’s representative at the Academy Awards next year.
“I still think about it and it’s a dream that went by too fast,” Niasari says about her Sundance experience. “I was so anxious and sweaty beforehand because it was the first time that we had screened it in front of an audience. It turned out to be such a beautiful experience because I could see how the story resonated with people from different walks of life. I realised it was beyond my family story. That is why the Audience Award was so meaningful to me because it showed me what the story meant to other people.”
Shayda is playing in cinemas now