In the opening scene of Shayda, the first feature film by Australian-Iranian director Noora Niasari, a young Iranian mother holds her little daughter by the hand in an airport. She points out safe places where she can hide or seek help if, during one of her unsupervised outings with her father, he tries to kidnap her and take her across the border.
This visceral fear and insecurity are at the heart of every shot of the film, in which Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi, all nuances) finds refuge in a center that welcomes victims of violence, in Australia, with her 6-year-old daughter, Mona (Selina Zahednia, just). She is fleeing a tyrannical husband, Hossein (Osamah Sami), determined to bring them both, or at least the child, back to their homeland, Iran, as soon as he finishes medical school.
As the narrative pattern of domestic harassment is now known to our collective imaginations, the unfolding of the story is expected. Noora Niasari, however, uses this predictability to build a realistic universe in which the intensity of emotions is balanced by snippets of everyday life and by the stubborn passage of time which compels survival.
Locking her protagonists in a cramped and suffocating setting, the filmmaker suggests more than she shows, with a few exceptions, the physical and psychological violence to which her two heroines are subjected. The silences, a muted tension inspired by the dark thriller, a few unexpected changes of shot and the embodied and restrained acting of the two main actresses are sufficient to evoke fear, danger and the permanence of the trauma.
Without losing sight of the burden of domestic and cultural violence under which her character falls, the director imperceptibly traces her path towards the light with a camera that suddenly becomes more fluid and close to the bodies. In shots leaving more room for movements than for faces, she emphasizes the support network formed by the residents of the shelter, the present moment imposed by childhood, the power of dance as well as the strength of its legacy — the story takes place during Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, whose symbolism of rebirth gives rise to moments marked by candor and hope.
The stark contrast offered by these scenes skillfully reflects the contradictory imperatives that compete for a corner in the mind of Shayda, whose desires for freedom and movement seek to create a breach in Iranian traditions and the place they reserve for women as well as in his fear of having his daughter taken away.
In this film largely inspired by her childhood memories, Noora Niasari demonstrates excellent mastery of rhythm and atmosphere, concocting a story that is certainly predictable, but fleshed out and shockingly true.