‘Shayda’ Review: Noora Niasari’s Narrative Feature Debut is a Striking, Moving Tale of Resistance and Empowerment | Toronto

This review contains spoilers.

In her feature film debut Shayda, which will represent Australia in this year’s Best International Feature Film Oscar race, Iranian-Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari chose to tell her own story, as an Iranian immigrant whose mother had long suffered domestic abuse and chose not to go back to Iran knowing that, if she ever does, she’d never be believed, never granted divorce and most likely would have lost custody of her only child. A gripping film from start to finish, featuring one of the best female performances out of TIFF (and of the year), this is a stirring film that, despite showing what it’s like to live in utter fear, still manages to inspire hope while avoiding several cliches that have typically been the go-to choice in domestic abuse dramas.

The film’s biggest strength, aside from Niasari’s impressive mastery of her craft, is that it’s never miserabilist. Niasari manages to capture and focus on hidden moments of beauty, quiet strength, and small acts of resistance that makes the film even more impactful. Even though the filmmaker is drawing from her own recollections as a child to an abused mother, her decision to show the unlikely strength that abuse victims gradually develop as they try to rebuild their lives, rather than portraying them as eternally suffering allows us to see a broader spectrum of what it’s like to cling to life despite being traumatized by merely existing: as horrifying as the acts of emotional, verbal and physical abuse the film portrays, we’re left admiring the unwavering determination of its characters to keep on going – when it was simply too easy to give up.

It’s 1995 and Shayda had been living with her husband Hossein (Osamah Sami who delivers one of the best supporting turns of the year) in Australia. They’d both moved from Iran so they could continue their studies there, but things soon take a dark turn when Hossein starts abusing Shayda, raping her, beating her up and verbally abusing her to no end. Back home, Shayda’s parents, like many Middle Eastern families until this day, urge her not to exit the marriage, after all divorce in Islamic states is up the man, but Shayda has had enough.

Fleeing from the marriage, she takes Mona and seek a women’s shelter in Australia, knowing that going back to Iran is a no-go. There, the pair try to rebuild their lives, pushing forward as they recover from what has been a devastating 4-year period. But Hossein is soon granted unsupervised visitation rights and the harassment, abuse and threats all return.

Even though the film is titled after the main lead, Shayda (a fantastic Zar Amir Ebrahimi), the true star of the show, both in terms of the story as well as performance, is the character of Mona (Selina Zahednia) who is, in fact, Niasari herself when she was a child. Zahednia delivers a stunning, heartbreaking performance as a child grappling with complicated truths that are quite hard to grasp as a child. Seeing her mother in constant agony, but more importantly, a state of unshakeable fear, while also having to deal with an emotionally manipulative father who pulls on an innocent mask in an attempt to further confuse and trick the child, we can’t take our eyes off Zahednia’s striking and gut-wrenching portrayal. Her eyes, body language and voice communicate how horrifying it is to reach the devastating realization, when you’re just 4 years old, that the world is not the safe place you’d have liked it to be, that your father’s affection may not what it seems to be, that your own existence is so volatile when it’s constantly threatened by a traumatizing father figure, that fear becomes a daily guest on the dinner table, dark closets at night and the weekly visitation trips.

The film features blends bone-chilling sequences, where Hossein becomes so omnipresent in Shayda’s mind as well as in real life as he chases her relentlessly in a desperate attempt to get her back as though she’s a missing property of his own, with several dancing sequences as we see Shayda and Mona trying to move on, enjoy the moment and shut off their past – even for just a few minutes. It’s such a moving blend, one that the film carries on until its final moments, as we see Niasari’s childhood recollections unfold. As the credits roll, Niasari shows us archival footage from 1995, as we see her real mother smiling to the camera and teaching her daughter some groovy dance moves, reminding her, and us, that life always finds a way.

Grade: A-

This review is from the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics will release Shayda in the U.S.