Zar Amir Ebrahimi (also known as Zahra) is set to bask in the glow of her Cannes Best Actress win for ‘Holy Spider’. Instead, she’s in a thoughtful mood as she sits down with Variety for a Zoom interview, recounting the tumultuous 16 years that culminated in landing a starring role in one of 2022’s highest-rated films.
But before red carpets and splashy premieres, this Iranian actress’ career was derailed and her personal life turned upside down following the release of a sex tape. As punishment, she risked being stoned and whipped in her homeland. Despite everything she’s been through, Ebrahimi persevered, and Hollywood is taking notice.
Ironically, Ebrahimi was never supposed to appear in “Holy Spider.”
She signed on to be director Ali Abbasi’s casting director as he put together the set for ‘Holy Spider,’ which tells the true story of Saeed Hanaei, nicknamed the ‘Spider Killer,’ which targeted working women of sex in 2000 and 2001, believing he was cleaning the city of moral corruption. Ebrahimi met nearly 500 people over three years to complete the cast. This included acclaimed theater actor Mehdi Bajestani, who plays the role of the psychologically disturbed Saeed, and first performer Arash Ashtiani as local reporter Sharifi, who gets calls from the killer about the whereabouts of his new victim. However, Abbasi struggled to find the right person to play Rahimi, a journalist who descends into the dark underbelly of Iran’s holy city of Mashhad to investigate the murders. At various times, Ebrahimi, who starred in soap operas in her country before she was driven to flee, expressed interest in Abbasi to play the role. But he rejected her suggestion, saying, “You’re too sweet. This reporter, I see, is not you.
Eventually, they found a promising Iranian actress, but a few days before filming began in Jordan, she dropped the project, fearing the film would be too controversial. Iran has a thriving film business (Asghar Farhadi has won two international Oscars for the country in recent years). However, it also has strict censorship, which prevented ‘Holy Spider’ from filming in Iran due to the country’s rules, among them, that women cannot be portrayed without headscarves.
“He looks at the dark side of the soul,” Abbasi says of “Holy Spider,” which was announced as Denmark’s international feature submission for this year’s Oscars.
The director also wanted to explore the social conditions and reactions that allowed Saeed to justify his killing spree using religion. The repressive society explored in “Holy Spider” was all too familiar to Ebrahimi, who fled Iran in 2006 after becoming the center of media attention for appearing in a sex tape. It was an intimate encounter between two consenting adults that was privately filmed in 2004. Then two years later, a friend called Ebrahimi to tell him that a video was circulating online and the woman it was showing appeared to be she.
Participating in an explicit sex tape is a serious crime under Iranian law. Ebrahimi denied his involvement at the time to local authorities and media. “I had to deny; otherwise they were going to put me in jail or worse,” she said.
Iranian authorities have accused her of leaking the tape herself to become “more famous”, which she says she did not do. However, having now left Iran for the first time, Ebrahimi admits that she is the woman in the video. And according to Ebrahimi, authorities eventually tracked down the man who leaked the tape, an actor in Iran whom she declines to name. This man was sentenced to six years in prison after the police discovered on his computer a vast archive of images, videos and conversations with girls asking them for nude photos. However, three months into his sentence, he was released, gaining even more notoriety than before. Iranian citizens even raised funds for him after his cancer diagnosis and sent him to Germany for special treatment.
“I think people even appreciated what he did,” Ebrahimi said in tears. “They let him work. They let him out of jail. I faced whippings.
On the day that Ebrahimi’s trial for participating in the sex tape was due to begin, a second case against the actress was opened. Police and officials began interviewing former colleagues and friends of Ebrahimi, asking for photos showing her in any sexualized setting or even just touching another man. As part of that investigation, prosecutors planned to introduce five men who would testify to having had premarital affairs with Ebrahimi. Before appearing in court, Ebrahimi fled Iran and never returned. The government found her guilty in absentia and she was sentenced to 10 years in prison, 99 lashes with a leather strap and banned from appearing in Iranian films and television. In response to the scandal, a bill in the Iranian parliament was passed soon after making the production of sexually explicit media, even for private consumption, an offense punishable by death.
“Holy Spider”
Courtesy of Everett Collection
Following its Cannes debut, Utopia bought the US distribution rights to “Holy Spider” and screened the thriller thriller at several festivals, including Telluride and Toronto. Ebrahimi says she is relishing the experience after the long struggle she has endured and hopes her ordeal can inspire others.
“We have a cultural problem in Iran,” she says. “If I have a message for a girl or a boy, in the world or in Iran – talk, talk, we have to talk.”