HOLY SPIDER (عنكبوت مقدس)
Bay Area Premiere
TRAILBLAZERS | WORLD
Denmark 2022, 106 min, Director: Ali Abbasi
Filmmaker Ali Abbasi follows up his acclaimed 2018 fantasy romantic drama Border (MVFF41) with a tense and unapologetically feminist procedural based on actual events. Zar Amir Ebrahimi won Best Actress at Cannes for her portrayal of Rahimi, an Iranian journalist on the case of a serial killer who, in striking down sex workers, insists he is doing God’s work. Inspired by real-life murderer Saeed Hanaei, who slew 16 women in 2000 and 2001, Holy Spider evokes Zodiac and other engrossing crime thrillers, in which the search for a perpetrator doubles as a commentary on societal ills. Abbasi crafts a seemingly straightforward detective story, gripping and unsettling in equal measure, before unveiling a dark surprise in its second half, building and heating the drama nearly to a boiling point. Ebrahimi plays Rahimi with ferocious determination in her portrayal of a crusader determined to bring a bad man to justice. —Tim Grierson
In Iranian languages with English subtitles
