INTERVIEW: ‘Shayda’ is a personal story of a woman yearning for a fresh start
Photo: Shayda stars Zar Amir Ebrahimi, of Holy Spider fame, as the title character. Photo courtesy of Jane Zhang / Provided by Sony Pictures Classics with permission.
Shayda, the new movie written and directed by Noora Niasari, follows the title character, an Iranian woman trying to make a life for herself and her daughter, Mona, in a women’s shelter in Australia. She is escaping an abusive husband and strives for some sense of normalcy. The problem, according to a summary of the movie, is that her ex-husband comes back into their lives and seeks visitation rights with Mona.
Shayda, a Sony Pictures Classics release, is currently playing in Los Angeles and New York City’s Film Forum. A nationwide rollout is expected in the coming weeks. Critics have heralded the film, which was nominated for a Directors Guild of America award.
Niasari, who based the movie on her mother’s life, selected Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Holy Spider) for the important role of Shayda. Recently the writer-director and actor talked with Hollywood Soapbox about the movie, its inspirations and the universal message of this title character. Here’s what they had to say …
On how Shayda became a passion project …
NIASARI: “For me, it was in the middle of 2017. I shared with my mom my idea to make this film, and she was a bit hesitant at first, but agreed to then write a memoir that tracked her memories of our time in the shelter because I was only 5 years old and really needed her to fill in those gaps of my memories. So, yeah, that was day one, supporting her and the writing of the memoir, which then became the grounding and inspiration for the screenplay.”
EBRAHIMI: “A good friend of mine … called me, and she told me about this project. She put us in contact. We had a chat, and then in a very usual way I put myself on a tape. I tried one or two scenes, and then I think it was very smooth in the beginning. Both of us connected on different levels. I really love the story and the courage of Noora to tell this story. In different ways, I just connected myself as a woman with my own experience of life to the story of her mom and herself. So, yeah, I jumped into it.”
On how the character of Shayda eventually took on a life of her own …
NIASARI: “It was very much from the first or second draft that it started departing from the cold-hard facts of our experience. I knew that I was making a piece of cinema, and so I had to navigate this blurry line between memory and fiction. All the time I was striving for it to feel emotionally true, rather than factually true, and so there’s a lot of fictional elements and amalgamation of experiences. Like, many of the women in the shelter are not necessarily women we lived with it, but they were women that I’ve encountered over the years or that my godmother, who plays the social worker, encountered. So, yeah, quite a lot of inspiration from close people in my life. I think that Zar brought so much nuance to the Shayda character, and ultimately the character is quite different from my mother, but at the same time has a lot of parallels and beautiful synergy and connection.”
On preparing to become Shayda …
EBRAHIMI: “First of all, Noora was very generous, and she shared with me … so many recordings with her mom, even some images. When I arrived in Melbourne just two weeks before shoot to get ready, it was like I knew the story. I knew her mom, but when I met with her mom, she was my best friend already. But that’s the way I work always. I try to research, but at the same time, I believe all characters exist in you as a person. It’s only a matter of how you can reach out to those characters. … Noora had a very special way of preparing the movie with me and the little girl Selina [Zahednia]. I was really lucky to have her as my partner. She’s so talented and really iconic from the beginning, from the first second we met each other. We were best friends, really like mother and daughter. I think that really helped me to bring this character out.”
On how Shayda is a universal character who many people can identify with …
EBRAHIMI: “I agree, at the end of the day, it’s a universal character. We see now in screenings. People they come to us after watching the movie, and everyone is so touched. It’s not only about women. In Sundance, I met young men having the same story about their childhood or their parents or their family. Yeah, I think the story of the whole shelter and these women from everywhere, they share their pain and their traumas, [and] make it quite universal. For me, it’s about trauma and how you overcome that trauma. Through this experience, this shooting for me was very painful in a way. … All actors in front of the camera, we could feel her. It was a very special moment of shooting for us every day. I think I learned a lot about myself.”
On what the main takeaway is from watching Shayda …
NIASARI: “I think it’s about finding a new perspective from the past and not necessarily letting the past define you, but learning from it and growing from it and finding healing out of it. I think I wouldn’t change anything about my experience. In the past, I felt differently. I feel very strongly how much this film has become a vessel for healing and catharsis not just for me and my family, but for audiences around the world. It’s been so incredible seeing how it touches Indonesian women, Korean women and also men. As Zara said, there’s universal experience of domestic violence unfortunately and also finding that strength to move past one’s fear, which even if you escape a situation, it still lives with you. And as children grow up in that fearful environment, that anxiety lives with you for decades, so it’s really about working through a lot of that. I think that’s why audiences feel so touched because they feel seen. They feel like a part of them is on screen.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Shayda, written and directed by Noora Niasari, stars Zar Amir Ebrahimi. The Sony Pictures Classics release is currently playing in Los Angeles and at New York City’s Film Forum, with additional markets to come in the following weeks. Click here for more information.
