Judoka Leila Hosseini is kneeling on the mat. The Iranian Judo Association has ordered her to withdraw from the World Championship competition under a pretext so that she does not compete against an Israeli athlete. The regime cannot risk a defeat against a competitor from the country of its arch-enemies. Leila has defied everyone, but now she simply has no strength left. She is weakened, injured, exhausted. Her trainer Maryam Ghanbari (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) is secretly watching her from a distance. She too has been put under pressure. Shortly before, the two women had argued bitterly, insulted and hit each other. Maryam’s almost motionless face – a close-up in high-contrast black and white – reflects her inner struggle. Will she keep her distance, abandon Leila and thus have a chance of being pardoned when she returns to Iran? Or does she risk everything, including the lives of her family, and support her judoka? Maryam decides to support her athlete. She runs to the mat, where she is exposed to the gaze of the Iranian agents. She cheers Leila on and screams her heart out.

»Holy Spider« (2022). © Alamode Film

This struggle with herself, this controlled, dignified and sometimes stern face, behind which anger at all the injustice in this world simmers, is the trademark of Zar Amir Ebrahimi, born in Iran in 1981. This also applies to the role with which she achieved her international breakthrough in 2022, but for which she was not even intended. Director Ali Abbasi (“Border”) initially hired her as casting director for his film “Holy Spider”. For the character of the fictional journalist Rahimi, who tracks down a serial killer who murders prostitutes in Mashhad, Iran, on her own, Ebrahimi seemed too soft and friendly to him. Two weeks before filming began in Jordan, the Iranian leading actress unexpectedly dropped out for fear of reprisals. Ebrahimi lost her temper, and in her fit of rage Abbasi recognized his new leading actress. A stroke of luck for both sides. As investigative journalist Rahimi, Ebrahimi shines in all facets. Stubbornly and unwaveringly, she defends herself against male tutelage. Nevertheless, she has to submit to patriarchal power and almost falls victim to the murderer’s physical superiority. Anger, toughness, fear of death, courage – for this range, Ebrahimi was honored as best actress at the Cannes Film Festival, and her second acting career also gained momentum internationally.

»Tomorrow we are free« (2019). © Little Dream Pictures

Her first career in Iran ended abruptly in 2006. She played one of the most popular characters in the hit series “Nargess,” which was watched by around 70 percent of the Iranian population, and was considered a promising young actress. She had just played a supporting role in Abbas Kiarostami’s “Shirin.” After the last episode of “Nargess” was broadcast, however, an amateur film surfaced showing Ebrahimi and her then partner having consensual sex in a dimly lit room. The film spread like wildfire, with up to 100,000 copies reportedly being sold under the counter and circulating online. Ebrahimi became the center of the Islamic Republic’s first sex tape scandal. She was arrested and interrogated. The then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, described the case and Ebrahimi in particular as a “national disgrace.” Her ex-boyfriend and protagonist of the soft sex film that had distributed the video received a prison sentence of several years, from which he was released after just two months. He is still working in the film industry in Iran today. She was punished with a ten-year ban on working. She was not formally charged at first because she did not confess under strong pressure. When friends informed her of new investigations and threatened her with 99 lashes and imprisonment, she fled to Paris via Azerbaijan on March 1, 2008. She nostalgically remembers the exact date on her official Instagram account with a self-portrait that shows her in a field of red poppies while still in Iran. She repeatedly uses her Instagram reach of currently 636,000 followers to make political statements. Especially since the murder of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, she has been sharing news and reels that protesters in Iran have recorded at the risk of their lives. She campaigns for support and advocates for the fate of prominent dissidents such as Taraneh Alidoosti; she repeatedly stresses the importance of protecting democracy and exercising one’s right to vote.

»Teheran Tabu« (2017). © Camino

The escape to France marked a difficult change for Zar, who was only 27 at the time. She had to make contacts in the industry and learn a new language. Interviews show that, in addition to her native Farsi, she now speaks French and English almost perfectly. Since filming “Tomorrow We’re Free,” she has also learned a little German. In 2009, she appeared again in plays and short films, but she didn’t get her first leading role until 2016 in the Swedish drama “Bride Price vs. Democracy.” When creating her characters, she usually draws on personal experience. In “Tehran Taboo” (2017), she plays the pregnant and obedient Zahra. As a literary studies graduate, she secretly applies for a job that she is not allowed to take without her husband’s permission, and is ultimately broken by these contradictions. Despite the alienation caused by the rotoscoping process, Ebrahimi’s presence is unmistakable. Her digital double also has her inner despair at the external constraints and expectations written on her face. A face that is both inconspicuous and striking, with a hint of defiance always playing around her lips. READ FULL STORY HERE>>>CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING>>>

»The Thing« (2023). © Verleih

Even after her breakthrough in “Holy Spider”, she has remained true to Iranian stories. In Noora Niasari’s debut “Shayda”, Ebrahimi plays an Iranian exile who has emigrated to Australia and tries to save herself and her daughter from a violent husband. In Steffi Niederzoll’s documentary “Seven Winters in Tehran”, she lent her voice to Reyhaneh Jabbari, who was executed in 2014, and for Mehran Tamadon’s “My Worst Enemy” she improvised the role of an Iranian security agent. In order to convincingly portray the interrogation and torture tactics, she drew on her own traumatic experiences. The stories from Iran have not left her alone, and that has not changed since she accepted French citizenship in 2017. “I have this voice and I know how to use it. I can’t sit here and watch these people suffer without saying anything about it,” she explained her motivation in an interview at the Locarno Film Festival.

»Tatami« (2023). © Judo Production LLC / Juda Khatia Psuturi

Since she was forced to change her career in Iran due to the professional ban, Ebrahimi is also well versed in other trades such as film editing, directing and production. She has made documentaries and curated programs for the BBC’s Persian division. In 2019, she founded her own production company, Alambic Production. It seems as if she wants to make the most of her second chance. In the aforementioned “Tatami”, which turns a judo competition into a political thriller, she is not just an actress. It is her debut as co-director alongside Guy Nattiv (“Golda”) and marks the first cinematic collaboration between an Israeli and an Iranian filmmaker.

The biopic “Honor of Persia” is currently being planned, in which Ebrahimi will be the sole director for the first time and will tell her own story. Ebrahimi is a fighter, and all the pain, grief and injuries have made her who she is today. She herself now seems to be able to see this in a positive light, as she revealed in an interview with the “New York Times”: “I sometimes think, for an actress, I’m happy to have this much pain in my life.”

2024-07-25 22:04:37
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