by Jackie Keast IF Magazine January 23, 2023

Writer-director Noora Niasari’s Shayda has been hailed by reviewers at the Sundance Film Festival as a powerful, gripping and affecting debut.

Shayda premiered over the weekend in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, with critics making special mention of the performances of lead actress Zar Amir-Ebrahimi, who won best actress at last year’s Cannes for Holy Spider, Osamah Sami, and young newcomer Selina Zahednia.

Inspired by Niasari’s own childhood, Shayda is set in 1995 and follows a young Iranian mother (Amir-Ebrahimi in the titular role) who finds refuge with her six-year-old daughter Mona (Zahednia) in an Australian women’s shelter during the two weeks of Iranian New Year (Nowrooz).

Aided by the strong community of women at the refuge, they seek their freedom in this new world of possibilities, only to find themselves facing the violence they tried so hard to escape – namely Hossein, Shayda’s domineering and abusive husband (Sami), who seeks to be reunited with his daughter.

Vincent Sheehan produced Shayda through his new production venture Origma 45, with Dirty Films’ Cate Blanchett, Andrew Upton and Coco Francini the execuitve producers.

Writing for Screen Daily, Tim Grierson said that strong reviews, Blanchett as an EP, and the growing global awareness of the women’s rights movement in Iran “should help spark interest” in the Australian drama.

He noted a “palpable sense of dread hangs heavy over the film”, as the audience waits for the inevitable moment that Shayda’s husband will seek to separate her from her child.

“A story like this could lend itself to manipulative melodrama, but Niasari gives the material a pared-down simplicity, resisting big emotional twists or forced dramatic stakes. The muted approach only adds to the taut mood: Shayda is such a vivid presence that we keep fearing the moment when her resilient buoyancy may be destroyed by Hossein,” he wrote.

“Shayda is a tale of a woman who chooses hope over fear, which is all the more inspiring because the film shows us the many reasons why she should be afraid.”

In Variety, Tomris Laffly praised Ebrahimi’s “deceptively simple, even regal” performance, as she conveys her character’s “internalized battles through understated moments with nothing more than a delicate look or a pregnant silence.”

“Equally impressive are Zahednia as the wordlessly traumatized Mona — Niasari clearly has a special way with child actors — and Sami, a villain both blood-curdling and disturbingly familiar. The greatest asset of Shayda, however, is its unmistakably feminine spirit of perseverance, one that runs wild and free in this promising debut,” she wrote.

While conceding the film may skew towards the predictable at times, Laffly counters that this is as “the male abuser’s playbook is often predictable too”. She described Niasari’s filmmaking style as carrying “traces of a documentarian’s off-the-cuff alertness, braiding it with qualities akin to a thriller”.

“Through DP Sherwin Akbarzadeh’s fluid and immersive camera movements, the film’s opening is a perfect example of this verité-style intensity,” she wrote.

In The Hollywood Reporter, Shari Linden similarly commended the “quiet ferocity” of Amir-Ebrahimi’s performance and her chemistry with Zahednia.

“Amir Ebrahimi…. [is] quietly riveting, embodying a refusal to retreat into prescribed roles. And Sami, in what might have been a merely thankless, one-note part, makes the sanctimonious Hossein both monstrous and pathetic, overwhelmed by the threat he perceives in Shayda’s strength,” she wrote.

Linden also praised Niasari and Akbarzadeh’s collaboration, and the editing of Elika Rezaee.

“Throughout the film, Niasari and cinematographer Sherwin Akbarzadeh move the action between a realm of the secretive and fraught and one of brightness and play,” she wrote.

Shayda received major production investment from Screen Australia in association with The 51 Fund and was financed with support from VicScreen and the Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund.

Executive producers from the 51 Fund, which provides financing to feature films of any genre that are directed by women, include Caitlin Gold, Lindsay Lanzillotta, Naomi McDougall Jones, Lois Scott, and Nivedita Kulkarni.

Madman is handling distribution in ANZ.

BY TIM GRIERSON, SENIOR US CRITIC Screen Daily 20 JANUARY 2023

In Australia, an Iranian immigrant fights for her life and her daughter in Noora Niasari’s powerful, semi-autobiographical debut

SOURCE: SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

‘SHAYDA’

Dir/scr: Noora Niasari. Australia. 2023. 117mins

Making her feature debut, writer-director Noora Niasari has crafted a gripping drama about one Iranian woman’s struggle to extricate herself from her husband — an ordeal that could also mean losing her daughter. Named for its weary but resilient protagonist, Shayda is inspired by Niasari’s own childhood and stars Zar Amir Ebrahimi as a mother hiding out in a women’s shelter in Australia as she attempts to remake her life and process the abuse she endured in her marriage. A palpable sense of dread hangs heavy over the film, the audience bracing for the inevitable moment that her domineering husband tries to separate her from her child. 

Amir Ebrahimi gives a remarkable performance that’s a smart mixture of fiery and openhearted

Shayda premieres in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, its theatrical prospects bolstered by the presence of Amir Ebrahimi, who won Best Actress at last year’s Cannes for Holy Spider. Cate Blanchett serves as an executive producer, and strong reviews — not to mention the growing global awareness of the women’s rights movement in Iran — should help spark interest.

The story takes place in 1995, when Shayda (Amir Ebrahimi) is raising six-year-old Mona (Selina Zahednia), her loving, ebullient parenting style belying the anxiety underneath her warm smile. She has moved to Australia with her husband Hossein (Osamah Sami), but his abuse— including rape — has driven her to seek refuge in an undisclosed women’s shelter as she seeks to divorce him. But Hossein has been permitted visitation rights with Mona, and he fully intends to bring their daughter back with him to Iran.

Home movies of a young Niasari during the end credits signal the semi-autobiographical nature of the material: like Mona, the writer-director grew up in Australia after being born in Tehran. (Shayda is dedicated to “my mother and the brave women of Iran”.) And while the film isn’t quite a thriller, viewers will feel the lingering unease surrounding Shayda, who must contend with a nearly impossible set of circumstances. Refusing to let her husband know where she now lives, she grapples with the constant uncertainty of what might happen if the location of the women’s shelter is compromised. (The appearance of a mysterious car stationed outside the house is enough to make Shayda and the other residents nervous.) But there’s also Shayda’s thorny legal situation: as the bullying Hossein puts it, “You can’t stay here, get your divorce and keep the child.” Will Shayda have to choose between her freedom and Mona?

Amir Ebrahimi gives a remarkable performance that’s a smart mixture of fiery and openhearted. The film never lets us forget that although Shayda is mindful of the danger she faces from her violent husband, she isn’t willing to cower from life. After all, by rejecting customs like wearing a hijab, Shayda has already separated herself from an old existence she no longer desires. Shayda nicely balances the character’s understandable worry with a thirst to live — which includes the possibility of a new romantic relationship with sensitive, handsome Farhad (Mojean Aria), who is not aware that she is still married. 

Occasionally, Shayda meets Hossein at a mall so he can pick up Mona, and Sami is convincing as this conniving husband, who schemes to turn his daughter against Shayda while trying to determine if his wife is dating anyone. But it’s not just Hossein applying pressure on Shayda: her own mother, still living in Iran, calls to tell Shayda to forgive him, insisting that’s he a good man. In the Iranian community in which she finds herself in Australia, Shayda encounters plenty of patriarchal attitudes about marriage – a tension that will come to a head near the film’s end when Hossein confronts her in public.

A story like this could lend itself to manipulative melodrama, but Niasari gives the material a pared-down simplicity, resisting big emotional twists or forced dramatic stakes. The muted approach only adds to the taut mood: Shayda is such a vivid presence that we keep fearing the moment when her resilient buoyancy may be destroyed by Hossein. But Shayda also takes time to focus on the offhand, happy moments between her and Mona, and newcomer Zahednia is endearing without being cutesy. (The child actor is especially effective once Mona starts to grasp her father’s cruelty.) Shayda is a tale of a woman who chooses hope over fear, which is all the more inspiring because the film shows us the many reasons why she should be afraid. 

By Manori Ravindran Variety 18 January 2023

Five years ago, Noora Niasari asked her mother to write a memoir in order to fill in the gaps of some fuzzy childhood memories. The Iranian Australian director had been just five years old when her mother fled an abusive relationship and left her entire community to raise Niasari on her own in a foreign country.

An early draft of “Shayda,” which opens the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance on Friday, was based on that memoir and tracks Niasari’s mother’s life from her arranged marriage in Iran as a teenager to finding independence in Australia with her child. The resulting film stars “Holy Spider” breakout Zar Amir-Ebrahimi as Shayda, and Selina Zahednia as her daughter, Mona.

“There are a lot of fictional elements within the current version of the film, but it’s very much grounded in the emotional truth of our experience,” the Melbourne-based Niasari tells Variety.

Backed by Screen Australia and produced by Cate Blanchett’s Dirty Films, “Shayda” is the helmer’s first feature film and follows a number of acclaimed shorts, including “Tâm,” “17 Years and a Day” and “Simorgh.” The director says she had to work up to “Shayda,” both technically as an artist, and emotionally as a daughter who’s still processing her past trauma.

That pain, however, would only deepen in the fall when, as “Shayda” was being edited, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody in Iran, after having been arrested by Tehran’s morality police for wearing a hijab “improperly.”

Amini’s death sparked a revolution in Iran, now coined the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, which has seen women forgoing their hijabs in public, and even destroying them in protest, only to be faced with violent and sometime deadly rebukes from the regime. More than 500 people have so far died as part of the street protests, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Niasari hopes that “Shayda” — one of three films from directors of Iranian descent that are playing at Sundance (the others are “The Persian Version” and “Joonam”) — will be a “drop in an ocean of change.” While any sort of demonstration hasn’t yet been planned for Park City, the director says industry panels will address the situation and its impact on human rights as well as filmmaking.

“I don’t see it as something that’s going to be creating a monumental shift — I’m really realistic about the situation — I just hope that it’s a way to amplify and support what’s happening in Iran.”

Read on for Niasari’s full interview.

You’ve made a number of shorts ahead of this feature. Why was this the right moment to make this film?

I didn’t feel ready. I felt we were making the shorts, documentaries, traveling, working, being in writers rooms, doing directors attachments. All of these things were stepping stones to make my feature. And at the same time, I needed to process some things in my personal life in order to be ready to make this film, because it was very challenging, emotionally and psychologically. I don’t know if I would have had the ability to do it any sooner.

When exactly did you shoot?

In July and August of 2022.

Oh, wow. So you had seen Zar in “Holy Spider” then?

Well, actually, I hadn’t. I saw the film before filming, but when I cast Zar, it was before Cannes. It was in February 2022. I was introduced to her as a potential candidate for Shayda. We searched far and wide, and I’m very grateful that I met Zar because, as soon as I saw her first audition, I just knew she epitomized the character. The duality of her vulnerability and strength really blew me away and I knew that she was Shayda.

When did Cate Blanchett and her production company come on board?

They became involved toward the end of this development stage, just before we went to market with the script. One of the producers sent the script to [Blanchett] because he’d worked on a film called “Little Fish” with her some years ago. They read the script and loved it, and then we had a Zoom meeting. They were champions of the project from then on. It’s wonderful to have her in my corner.

This is such a personal story. What did you find the most challenging in terms of the shoot?

Anything that involves the father character, Hossein, was particularly challenging. At the same time, the actor that I cast [Osamah Sami] has been a good friend for 10 years. We both live in Melbourne, and I have a lot of respect for him. He’s also very funny guy who does a lot of stand-up comedy. He has a charisma, presence, humor and lightness that I loved, and it just allowed his character to have this other side that the audience could access. He’s not just a black and white character. As an actor, he made me laugh every time I was on set, which really helped with what I was going through.

There must have been some crossover, too, between your edit on the film and the revolution in Iran, right?

The first couple of weeks of the edit is around the time when Mahsa Amini was detained and murdered by the regime. It was very difficult for my editor [who is Iranian American] and me to concentrate because we were following the news every night, not sleeping, stressed out, trying to call family and not getting through. But at the same time, we found a new motivation to finish it, to make it the best we could because Shayda’s fight is also a fight for freedom and independence, and breaking away from these cultural norms and laws that restrict her from living a life on her own terms. It gave me a renewed motivation to finish the film, because I had a depressive episode after finishing the shoot where I found it very difficult to be productive due to the emotional toll of the filming process. I needed one or two weeks off. I’d cry a lot and process, but my editor was so beautiful in creating a safe space and creating a light energy. When the revolution started in Iran, we were very unified by this situation, and we felt helpless. But in finishing the film, we found a renewed purpose.

When it’s so easy for people to turn off the news and block out what’s going on, how do you think films like yours can change perceptions of these world events? Could there be a change in the collective consciousness and how we discuss what’s happening in Iran?

In the instance of what’s happening in Iran, and the kinds of films that we’re making, it’s important to highlight a subjective, intimate experience — a personal one. One that takes you into the journey of a character, what they’re going through on a day to day basis. Because obviously with headlines and in Instagram posts, you only get a glimpse of something. My main hope for “Shayda” is that it’s a drop in this ocean of change. I don’t see it as something that’s going to be creating a monumental shift. I’m really realistic about the situation. I just hope that it’s a way to amplify and support what’s happening in Iran. I don’t think it can be more than that, but at the same time, I think that’s valuable and I’m very grateful to be able to contribute in that way.

How do you feel about the film likely being prohibited from screening in Iran?

I’ve never thought that that was very realistic. The film is not political, per se. It’s about social issues and women’s rights and women seeking freedom in the West, so I’ve never really had a hope that it would screen in Iran. One of my actors, when the revolution was happening, said, “How amazing would it be if we were able to go back one day and actually screen the film?” And that was really the first time that I had a little vision about it. It was very beautiful. But no, I’ve never had a hope that I would screen there, just because I know about all the censorship in Iran. If I was to go back today, I think I’d be in prison. I don’t think I would be allowed to leave the country because of the film and the people that I made the film with.

“Shayda” has its world premiere in Park City on Jan. 20, with additional screenings from Jan. 21-27.