On 07/12/2022 at 14:05
By Veronica Sawyer
In 2001, a bricklayer and seemingly uneventful family man from the holy city of Mashhad murdered sixteen prostitutes in the name of Allah. Ali Abbasian Iranian filmmaker who lives in Denmark, reconstructed this incident in Nights of Mashhada thriller presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
Taken from a news item that occurred in the early 2000s, Nights of Mashhad (in cinemas July 13) is the director’s third film after Shelly (2016) and the much noticed Border (2018).
Shot in Jordan (Iran was out of reach given the subject of the film), Nights of Mashhad reconstructs the crimes and the punishment of the “Spider” (nickname given to the killer because of his modus operandi. He lured his prey to their homes to strangle them). Attention shock thriller.
Zar Amir Ebrahimi won the interpretation prize at Cannes 2022 for his performance.
The official story: Iran 2001, a journalist from Tehran delves into the most infamous suburbs of the holy city of Mashhad to investigate a series of feminicides. She will quickly realize that the local authorities are in no hurry to see the case resolved. These crimes would be the work of a single man, who claims to purify the city of its sins, by attacking prostitutes at night.
