Shayda – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

A MOTHER’S DAY Dozen Watch List

May 9, 2024May 10, 2024 Jennifer Merin A Thousand and One, DUMPLIN, Good Luck to You Leo Grande, Hold Me Tight, lucky grandma, Miss Juneteenth, mothers day, Parallel Mothers, pepite maman, Shayda, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, the mother, The Persian Version

Mothers day is one of America’s big sellers, with all generations of children scrambling to regale their moms with flowers and chocolates and fancy brunches and greeting cards. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), Mother’s Day spending in the United States is expected to reach an all-time high of $35.7 billion this year. But aside from energizing the economy, Mothers’ Day offers an opportunity for some deep thinking about what motherhood means to us all. After all, we all have mothers who birthed us and many of us are mothers to the next generations of our species. That said, the mother-child relationship is universal and, as such, gives rise to as many individual situations and interpretations as there are people who are planted on Mother Earth. Here’s a list of movies worthy of a Mothers’ Day watch.

Festivals Reviews

SHAYDA (Melbourne IFF 2023) – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

August 14, 2023August 14, 2023 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Melbourne International FF 2023, Noora Niasari, Shayda, Zar Amir Ebrahimi

On the back of her extraordinary performance in Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider that saw her win the Best Actress Award at Cannes in 2022, Zar Amir-Ebrahimi tackles a very different character in Noora Niasari’s devastating yet moving Shayda. Set in suburban Australia, the film’s title character Amir-Ebrahimi packs a powerful performance as an emotionally shell-shocked Iranian woman who finds herself suddenly alone with her six-year-old daughter Mona hiding out in a women’s shelter as she attempts to divorce her abusive husband,

Festivals Reviews

SHAYDA (Sundance FF2023) – Review by Nadine Whitney

January 31, 2023February 5, 2023 Nadine Whitney australian films, Leah Purcell, Noora Niasar, ranian films, Selina Zahednia, Shayda, sundance film festival 2023, Zar Amir Ebrahimi

Iranian-Australian director Noora Niasari’s potent and essential debut is based on her childhood experiences. As a child Noora was living in a women’s shelter after her Iranian mother had to flee her abusive father. Noora asked her mother to write an autobiography of her experiences dealing with the constant fear of her retributive husband, exile from the Persian community in Australia, and the determination to raise her daughter in as stable an environment as possible. The memoire became Niasari’s basis of Shayda. Shayda received the Audience Award for World Cinema: Dramatic at Sundance Film Festival 2023.