Fifteen years ago facing facing prison and corporal punishment Zar Amir Ebrahimi was forced to give up a successful acting career and flee her home in Iran. Ebrahimi’s last two roles are fierce criticisms of Iranian patriarchal culture. Firstly, with the terrifying satire Holy Spider (2022), which won her the Best Actress in Cannes 2022 and now in Shayda (2023) a gut wrenching story of a mother trying to protect her family from an abusive husband. Away from starring roles, during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which arose in the wake of the murder of Mahsa Amini by the Iranian morality police, Ebrahimi has acted as a journalist collating the experiences of young female protesters. Hers is a career with meaning and purpose. 
 
Subscribe to Locarno Meets for lively conversations about art, culture life and everything in between with the likes of Lambert Wilson, Ken Loach, Harmony Korine, Marianne Slot, Luc Jacquet, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, and more.
 
Locarno Meets is a Locarno Film Festival original production, brought to you by UBS.
 
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Host: Alexander Miller
Audio Producer: Jack Boswell
Video Producer: Claudia Campoli