Between 2000 and 2001, in Mashhad, Iran, one of the holy cities linked to Shiism where millions of pilgrims flock every year, a father, nicknamed “the Spider”, murdered sixteen prostitutes to rid the city of debauchery. .
His highly publicized trial ended in his death sentence, not without raising the question of the legitimacy of his actions: killing is reprehensible, but is suppressing prostitutes just as condemnable? While the murderer was tried, demonstrators marched in his favor, defending the idea that he would have acted for the good, in the name of morality.
All things considered, this affair had the same media coverage in Iran as that of the Zodiac killer, who traumatized Northern California in the 1970s. With similarities: the difficulties of the police in apprehending the killer and the the latter’s propensity to communicate with the press to comment on his crimes, which has fueled the mythology.
Ali Abbasi was still living in Iran at the time of the murders. This doctor’s son, from a bourgeois family, was destined to go to Germany to take philosophy courses. In 2002, he finally found himself in Sweden studying architecture and he now lives in Denmark, where he has become a filmmaker. Yet, he says, “you have to face it, I have never known a life in Europe as comfortable as the one I had in Tehran”.
The “parallel reality” of Iranian cinema
Nights of Mashhad (in theaters July 13), his third feature film, features this famous news story. Presented in competition at the last Cannes Film Festival, he left with the prize for female interpretation for Zahra Amir Ebrahimi, an actress and director who had taken refuge in France since 2008 after a sextape affair which led to her being questioned by the authorities. She plays a journalist pretending to be a prostitute in order to attract the serial killer.
“Until proof to the contrary, Iranians have a sexuality, and there are prostitutes in our country, like everywhere else. »Ali Abbasi
The film recounts a certain drift in Iranian society and an increasingly despotic power. “I had, like everyone in Iran, followed this story, says Ali Abbasi. It really got interesting when a segment of Iranian society turned a serial killer into a selfless hero acting for the common good. It wasn’t a murder story anymore, it was suddenly something else. Part of the media, ultraconservatives and conservatives – there are no liberal newspapers in Iran – considered that this assassin was fulfilling his religious duty. There, I wondered: in which other country do we see such a thing? »
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