Holy Spider Utopia Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten Director: Ali Abbasi Screenwriter: Ali Abbasi, Afrshin Kamran Bahrami Cast: Mehdi Bajestani, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Arash Ashtiani, Forouzan Jamshidnejad, Alice Rahimi Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 9/21/22 Opens: October 28, 2022 In discussions about former president Donald Trump, I have […]
The post Holy Spider Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post Holy Spider Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 10/23/2022
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
Streamer and distributor Mubi has acquired Ali Abbasi’s Cannes Film Festival competition title “Holy Spider” for the U.K., Ireland, Latin America (excluding Mexico) and Malaysia.
The film will be released theatrically followed by an exclusive Mubi streaming release.
The film follows family man Saeed as he embarks on his own religious quest — to “cleanse” the holy Iranian city of Mashhad of immoral and corrupt street prostitutes. After murdering several women, he grows ever more desperate about the lack of public interest in his divine mission.
It stars Mehdi Bajestani, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Arash Ashtiani, Forouzan Jamshidnejad, Alice Rahimi, Sara Fazilat and Sina Parvaneh.
The Variety review of the film praised it for its “laudable instinct for humanizing and dimensionalizing the victims and their families, who are poignantly depicted despite the brevity of their screen time.”
The film has been generating plenty of heat at Cannes. Feminist protestors stormed...
The film will be released theatrically followed by an exclusive Mubi streaming release.
The film follows family man Saeed as he embarks on his own religious quest — to “cleanse” the holy Iranian city of Mashhad of immoral and corrupt street prostitutes. After murdering several women, he grows ever more desperate about the lack of public interest in his divine mission.
It stars Mehdi Bajestani, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Arash Ashtiani, Forouzan Jamshidnejad, Alice Rahimi, Sara Fazilat and Sina Parvaneh.
The Variety review of the film praised it for its “laudable instinct for humanizing and dimensionalizing the victims and their families, who are poignantly depicted despite the brevity of their screen time.”
The film has been generating plenty of heat at Cannes. Feminist protestors stormed...
- 5/27/2022
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
Mubi has acquired rights to Cannes hit Holy Spider for the UK, Ireland, LatAm and Malaysia.
Danish-Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi’s feature, which had its World Premiere in the Main Competition and has been one of the fest’s buzziest titles, follows the true story of family man Saeed, who embarked on a religious quest to “cleanse” the Iranian city of Mashhad of immoral prostitutes.
He is tracked down by a spiky young journalist, desperate to get to the truth.
Director Abbasi is a well respected auteur and his previous feature, Border, won the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes 2018.
Mubi will take rights to the key territories of the UK, Ireland, LatAm and Malaysia, with Utopia having taken U.S. rights several days ago. Wild Bunch International is handling international sales and negotiated the deal with Mubi, which has also picked up Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave and...
Danish-Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi’s feature, which had its World Premiere in the Main Competition and has been one of the fest’s buzziest titles, follows the true story of family man Saeed, who embarked on a religious quest to “cleanse” the Iranian city of Mashhad of immoral prostitutes.
He is tracked down by a spiky young journalist, desperate to get to the truth.
Director Abbasi is a well respected auteur and his previous feature, Border, won the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes 2018.
Mubi will take rights to the key territories of the UK, Ireland, LatAm and Malaysia, with Utopia having taken U.S. rights several days ago. Wild Bunch International is handling international sales and negotiated the deal with Mubi, which has also picked up Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave and...
- 5/27/2022
- by Max Goldbart
- Deadline Film + TV
It is hard to watch the brutalization of women on screen, especially when you know it is a re-creation of an actual crime. But it is harder still — rightly, valuably so — if you’ve been made to notice the way this woman’s lipstick is smeared over her cracked lips, if you’ve seen the old bruises that mottle that woman’s body beneath her chador, or watched her carefully stash her flats in a crinkled plastic bag as she switches into heels in a dingy bathroom. Saeed Hanaei, the real-life serial killer reimagined in Ali Abbasi’s tense and convincing procedural, believed that God was behind his grand mission to rid his city of prostitutes. But in “Holy Spider,” the devil is in those devastating details.
Hanaei, here portrayed with brave understatement by affable Iranian actor Mehdi Bajestani, was a builder, a family man, a resident of Iran’s...
Hanaei, here portrayed with brave understatement by affable Iranian actor Mehdi Bajestani, was a builder, a family man, a resident of Iran’s...
- 5/22/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Sometimes it hardly matters whether we know a story is based on truth or not. Watching Ali Abbasi’s thunderously damning Holy Spider, on the other hand, it drives a wedge into your mind knowing that a serial killer really did terrorize the Iranian holy city of Mashhad in the early 2000s, that he killed 16 street prostitutes, that there were police who conspired to help him escape and that there were people in Iran — a lot of people, he keeps assuring his family — who were on the murderer’s side. He was doing God’s work.
Swedish-Iranian director Ali Abbasi’s last film was the unclassifiable Border, a fable about outcasts and aliens in which an unfortunately grotesque Swedish customs official turns out to be a troll. Border won the prize for the best film in Cannes sidebar section Un Certain Regard in 2018. Holy Spider is in the festival competition...
Swedish-Iranian director Ali Abbasi’s last film was the unclassifiable Border, a fable about outcasts and aliens in which an unfortunately grotesque Swedish customs official turns out to be a troll. Border won the prize for the best film in Cannes sidebar section Un Certain Regard in 2018. Holy Spider is in the festival competition...
- 5/22/2022
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
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