Violence against women in Iran, Zar Amir Ebrahimi knows it well. Very good. The actress – made famous by a soap opera from the 2000s – had to flee her country after a video of her having sex with her lover leaked. And a huge scandal.
So flee before facing the justice of the Islamic Republic, which could have imprisoned him and whipped him.
Running away from colleagues and friends, both men and women, who “have allowed themselves to [la] to look at [la] judge and [la] destroy,” she said.
Fleeing a repressed society, which she calls “sex sick”.
But now, when she is a French citizen, Zar Amir Ebrahimi dreams of returning to the same country that has abused her so much. To be part of the uprising that has been shaking the dictatorship of the ayatollahs for two months already. To support the young women who were the impetus for this immense wave of protest, today transformed into a desire for revolution.
I should be on the street with these girls, but I know that if I get to Iran, I will be arrested at the airport and I will not be useful to anyone, she told me, during a videoconference interview at from Los Angeles. My position is absurd and it is also that of the entire Iranian diaspora. We would like to be in Iran, we want to be useful, we try to echo the voice of the demonstrators, but it’s difficult.
Zar Amir Ebrahimi
Yet Zar Amir Ebrahimi has the perfect excuse to address the world on behalf of his Iranian sisters. These days she’s promoting the movie Mashhad Nights, currently playing in Quebec. For her role in this feature film by Ali Abbasi, the 41-year-old actress received the prize for best female interpretation at the Cannes Film Festival last June.
And, in the Iranian context, this work could hardly be more relevant. It tells the fictionalized story of a real serial killer, Said Hanaei, who murdered 16 prostitutes in the holy city of Mashhad between July 2000 and July 2001. This veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, then aged 39 years old, married and a father, committed these crimes thinking he was fulfilling a divine mission. Before being executed, the man nicknamed the “spider killer” had the support of part of Iranian society.
I already knew this story. Canadian-Iranian filmmaker Maziar Bahari made an absolutely disconcerting documentary about the case, interviewing the murderer himself as well as his relatives who sang his praises.
Ali Abbasi’s film – in the form of a thriller – takes us elsewhere. The director, who shot his film in Jordan to escape censorship, plunges into the darkest recesses of the ambient misogyny that reigns in Iran and which goes far beyond the dictates of the Islamist regime.
“All women, all young girls in Iran experience harassment. In taxis, where we pile up with five or six people, half the time the guy sitting next to me touched me, says Zar Amir Ebrahimi.
When I was walking down the street, someone happened to push me against the wall to touch me. If I had a piece of skin sticking out, the guy across the street would look at me like I was naked. It’s all cultural, it’s not just the government.
Zar Amir Ebrahimi
“However, this government has not helped with its new Islam ideology to control people, control their bodies. We all became sexually ill because of the constraint we experienced under this government, ”she drops, bluntly.
To cure this disease, she adds, it takes more than a change of government, it also takes a huge collective awareness. And watching the Iranian men and women chanting “Woman, life, freedom” side by side, observing the immense surges of solidarity in the four corners of the country, she has the impression that there are two revolutions in the street in a.
“In Iran, when I faced the scandal, I wondered how my colleagues and the young women who live hidden freedoms in Iran, those who make love and party, how these women could judge me! Today, they have changed a lot, they are not afraid of anything. They have seen girls, like me, putting their lives on the line to defend their rights, refusing to be victims. It had an impact, she said. Women, when we are united, we can really do anything. »
It is therefore in this spirit of renewed solidarity that Zar Amir Ebrahimi speaks today. At his own risk. The Islamist regime, which regularly attacks its opponents abroad, has already denounced the actress and the film in which she stars, seeing it as an insult to all Muslims and the Shiite population.
“Once you decide to make films about Iran, you accept to live with the danger, concedes the star of Nights of Mashhad. Everything I say puts me in danger. It puts my family in danger. But it’s my life, my life as an Iranian. »