At the beginning of this film there is dialogue that seems like a commentary on the current mass protests in Iran.

It takes place between the reporter Arezu and a hotel employee: "Please cover your hair." - "It's none of your business." - "But the vice squad .

.

.” – “Mind your own business.” Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini, whose death at the hands of the vice squad in September sparked the protests, was also allegedly not properly veiled.

Still, it would be an exaggeration to attribute the gift of prophecy to the film Holy Spider, which came out the previous summer.

In Iran, the injustice against which the protest movement is directed lies on the streets, it is part of the texture of the society that the film describes.

Andrew Kilb

Feature correspondent in Berlin.

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The dialogue is also a split-second characterization of Arezu Rahimi, the film's heroine.

She has traveled from Tehran to report on the activities of a serial killer in the pilgrimage metropolis Mashhad, Iran's second largest city.

Arezu has been working as a freelance journalist since she reported sexual harassment to the editor of the newspaper she worked for.

The rumors that are circulating about her in the industry say something else: "Something happened" between her and her boss, whispers local reporter Sharifi, whom Arezu interviewed for her research.

The male gaze, against which the journalist defends herself, is at work not only in the hotel lobby, but all around her, including with the police, whose commissioner visits her in the evening and harasses her before she narrowly evades him gets rid of.

Zar Amir Ebrahimi, the actress who played Arezu, was herself the victim of a MeToo scandal in 2006 when an alleged sex tape of her circulated on the internet.

Instead of going to prison, Ebrahimi fled to Paris, where she still lives today.

In May last year, she received the Cannes Film Festival Actress Award for her role.

On the streets of Mashhad, Saeed, the serial killer, finds his victims.

The film begins with one of his deeds.

A young woman says goodbye to her child in a slum area, puts on make-up, puts on a colorful headscarf and stands on the side of the road.

She is seen with two of her clients, who humiliate and abuse her, then gets on a motorbike with a third.

It's Saeed.

He takes her to a half-finished building, throws her to the ground and strangles her with her cloth.

The camera shows a close-up of the dead man's face contorted with fear.

Images like this earned “Holy Spider” the accusation of excessive depiction of violence at its premiere in Cannes.

In fact, violence is omnipresent in this story: in the relationships between the prostitutes and their customers, in the men's gaze on Arezu, in the drug-addicted slums of Mashhad.

The murderer himself is traumatized by years of frontline service in the war between Iran and Iraq: when Saeed accidentally gets hit in the head with a soccer ball while having a picnic in the park, he collapses and weeps like a child.

From this point of view, it would be aesthetically inconsistent to hide the sight of his deeds.

The question is what that means for a film that not only wants to be a crime thriller, but also a portrait of society.