Exiled Iranian Actor Zar Amir Ebrahimi Wins Award For 'Holy Spider'

Exiled actor Zar Amir Ebrahimi was banned from Iranian cinema and sentenced to prison after her sex tape was leaked. Now, the actor’s performance in the thriller Holy Spider led her to her winning the Best Actress award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

Holy Spider is a thriller film based on the true story of Saeed Hanaei, a serial killer who targeted sex workers and killed 16 women in Mashhad, Iran. The film stars Ebrahimi as a fictional female journalist who was investigating a serial killer.

Zar Amir Ebrahimi

Zar Amir Ebrahimi was best known for her role in the television series Nargess. Due to issues following the sex tape scandal, Ebrahimi was banned from Iranian films in 2006 and was exiled from Iran in 2008.

99 lashes and a prison sentence awaited the actor for having sexual relations outside wedlock. She was also ostracised and harassed, and she, her friends, and her co-workers were interrogated. Intense investigations took place and the prosecutors planned to present five men who would testify they had premarital relations with the actor.

Before the men could appear in court, Ebrahimi fled Iran and never returned. The government found the actor guilty in absentia and she was banned from appearing in Iranian films and television for 10 years. She was also sentenced to 99 lashes.

The sex tape scandal case was a catalyst for the lower house of the Parliament of Iran to pass a bill making the production of sexually explicit media, even for private consumption, an offence punishable by death.

Ebrahimi said that Iran had cultural problem and that people needed to speak up. "If I have a message for any girl or boy, around the world or in Iran – speak, speak, we need to speak,” she said.

In a recent interview, the actor said, “I lost my career. I lost my whole life. And at some point, I became traumatised… The authorities did everything to me just to make me more helpless and make me more scared.”

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