Holy Spider

عنکبوت مقدس (2022)

Timing: 1:58 (118 min)

7.27/10
352

6.976/10
5576

7.3/10
32000

All about film

Video 5

Photo 41

Actors and characters

Release date

2022-07-13

Country

Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden

Production

Wild Bunch, Why Not Productions, Film i Väst, ARTE France Cinéma, Profile Pictures, ZDF/Arte, Nordisk Film Sweden, One Two Films, The Imaginarium, Rotor Film

Genre

Crime, Drama, Thriller, Horror

Budget

$0

Revenue

$1 706 583

Website

https://www.holyspider.com/

Director

Ali Abbasi

Actors

Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Mehdi Bajestani, Arash Ashtiani, Forouzan Jamshidnejad, Sina Parvaneh, Nima Akbarpour, Sara Fazilat, Alice Rahimi, Ali Nazarian, Sima Seyed
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Ali Abbasi, Afshin Kamran Bahrami

Producer

Sol Bondy, Jacob Jarek, Ali Abbasi, Ditte Milsted

Operator

Nadim Carlsen

Composer

Artist

Audition

Editing

Olivia Neergaard-Holm
All team (27)

• The plot is based on real events related to the Iranian serial killer named Saeed Hanaei, who killed 16 prostitutes in Iran between 2000 and 2001. Hanaei was a day laborer and a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, and he began committing crimes when – according to some sources – someone mistakenly took his wife for a prostitute.
• Initially, Zara Amir Ebrahimi was simply responsible for casting in the film crew, but then she was cast as the main character. This happened when the actress originally cast in the lead role refused to film without a hijab at the last moment and left the project. Ebrahimi auditioned about 50 more actresses, but ultimately the role went to her. Director and screenwriter Ali Abbasi wanted to cast an actress of a different type – he envisioned her as physically strong, young and inexperienced, and consumed by a passionate desire to prove herself – and Ebrahimi seemed too meek and mature to him. But at some point, Ebrahimi reminded him that in a critical situation, desperate people are capable of a lot, and Abbasi changed his mind.
• Work on the project began in 2016. Initially, filmmakers wanted to shoot in Iran, but they abandoned this idea in 2019. In early 2020, it was decided to organize filming in Jordan, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the start of filming had to be postponed several times. By the end of 2020, it was decided to move filming to Turkey, where the restrictions imposed due to Covid were not as strict, but local authorities began to stall. According to Ali Abbasi, this happened due to the intervention of the Iranian government. Work on the film was again moved to Jordan, where filming began in May 2021 and lasted a total of 35 days.
• A prosthetic penis was used in a scene depicting oral sex with the actress Alice Rahimi. According to the director and screenwriter Ali Abbasi, it proved impossible to find one in Jordan, so it had to be ordered from abroad. The first attempt to smuggle the rubber penis across the border failed. A German producer of the film officially declared at the border that he was carrying an artificial penis for filming, and the item was immediately confiscated. Eventually, Rahimi’s friend brought a dildo from France, hiding it in his pants and saying nothing to customs officials.
• Several days after Zara Amir Ebrahimi received the Golden Palm at the Cannes International Film Festival for Best Actress, the Iranian authorities brought charges of “sacrilege” against her, a native of Iran, and against the film’s director and screenwriter Ali Abbasi (whose background was mixed, Danish-Iranian). Following the awards ceremony in Cannes, Ebrahimi received approximately 200 threats, according to her own account. Threats were also directed at the director-screenwriter and other members of the film crew.
• Director and screenwriter Ali Abbasi changed the surname of Saeed Khanai (played by Mehdi Bejestani) and invented certain facts concerning the journalist (played by Zara Amir Ebrahimi) in order to avoid drawing undue attention to the real-life inspirations for these characters and to the overall theme of the film (misogyny). The filmmakers depicted the journalist, working undercover, posing as a prostitute to lure the criminal into a trap. This did not actually happen. According to Abbasi, they wanted to make a film not about a serial killer, but about the society in which such serial killers exist.