A woman victim of sexual violence wins Cannes’ Best Actress award

Zahra Amir Ebrahimi (Reuters)

By Alireza Bahrami

CANNES: The 75th Cannes Film Festival (2022) awarded one of its most special prizes to a woman who was a victim of sexual violence a few years ago.

Zahra Amir Ebrahimi, the star of “Holy Spider” at the Cannes Film Festival, won the Best Actress award. The film is directed by Iranian director Ali Abbasi and shot in Jordan.

The film tells the true story of a man who killed 16 female sex workers in Iran between 2000 and 2001. He was sentenced to death after his arrest.

In this film, Zahra plays the role of a journalist who, in order to discover the story, preys on a serial killer.

But this Iranian actress has had a strange past. She starred in several supportive roles in several TV movies and several movies 16 years ago. At that time, the video of her private sex with her boyfriend was strangely distributed on CD and on the Internet throughout Iran.

This incident caused Zahra to leave Iran and live in France unintentionally. During these years, she had little chance to continue his acting career.

She has always been referred to as a victim of privacy and mass sexual violence. She revealed a few years ago that a male actor in Iran had spread that private film out of jealousy. The young actor died of cancer a few years ago.

Now, Zahra has won her first acting award and one of the most important acting awards in the world in a film in the horror drama genre based on a real crime.

Zahra ‘s presence and success at the Cannes Film Festival caused the Iranian people to encourage her. In fact, a collective movement was formed in Iran to make up for the past mistake, Iranian filmmakers congratulated her and people praised him on social media.

“You are a great sign of God,” one famous Iranian actor wrote to her.

An Iranian cinema official also wrote: “This is a reward for patience, endurance and not being despaired.”