Film Review – Shayda (2023)

Shayda and her six-year-old daughter, Mona, take refuge in a women’s shelter. From there, a long emancipation journey begins.  The storyline is painfully ordinary. A woman who experienced domestic violence is running away from her abusive husband and, with the help of a woman’s run community, she will liberate and stabilise herself into a self-dependent life, providing a safe, joyful, and brimful of love environment for her daughter to grow up into a brave woman. Besides the obvious values this picture holds, be it a resonating, highly underrepresented subject (particularly in the context of Australian cinema), ‘Shayda’ stands out for its modest yet excellent execution and underlined themes, composing a nuanced story of cultural attachments and traditions that can dominantly infiltrate selfhood.

The structure and gestures of this film are pretty much conventional. A shaking hand-held camera is leading the way to the gloom, as the judgmental, overviewing glance of society is ever-present, and the husband is lurking in hectoring and rampage. Dialogues are not lacking in platitude, at points even didacticism, and the scenes are dressed with sly, yet banal, symbolism. The dance conveys hope for an unrestricted future and zeal for life; the characters progressively express with their body the position they aspire to sustain in relation to others in these dancing scenes, served by the director in amplitude. Between the main bursting scenes, we get empty of dialogue shots carefully crafted with cultural elements, making these moments a stand-alone immersive introduction to Iranian traditions iterated by the youngest generations.  In the case of Shayda, an Iranian woman who fled to Australia following her academic ambitions, divorcing and seeking custody for her child does not only have legal implications but also forces her into perpetual conflict with her community.

The most excruciating moment comes during Shayda’s testimony crafting, when Joyce (the leader of the shelter) reads out loud the events that led Shayda to leave her husband, while on the phone, a woman’s voice is translating in Persian. The translation contains the judgmental tone that Shayda is ever confronted with, and we get introduced to the pith of this film. But there is more. The occasional use of the main character’s mother tongue is a great tool to develop understanding, the climax of which comes on the phone conversations Shayda has with her mother. This voice, a loving and devastated mother, illustrates the main predicament a woman in the situation of Shayda has to face: being subjected to controversial words coming from the one who can love her the most. It also highlights how fear is ed on to generations and how female agency has been undermined by traditionalistic thinking enforced by a mother to a daughter to a mother. Exactly this point reveals the relevance of such a subject as domestic violence to the life experience of many.

Such as the director herself, Noora Niasari, who, in her debut feature, submitted her own tale. Before you think, ‘I’ve seen it all before’, dear reader, this film will keep your attention still because of the magnetic chemistry between Shayda and Mona. Zar Amir Ebrahimi, a great lean figure, holds the skin of Shayda in a fragile and afire state. We hear her agonising breathing as if we were in her thoughts, tangled in despair and determination. Next to her, the beautifully expressive face of Selina Zahednia embodies the condition of a child witnessing violence and fear. Zahednia’s performance is fluently overshadowing Ebrahimi, with all due respect. An unintentional, perhaps, layer to the film, that speaks right in the heart of a mother’s will to guide her daughter to self-respect, and makes Shayda and Mona an unforgettable mother-daughter duo.

★★★★

In UK cinemas from 12 July / Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Osamah Sami, Leah Purcell, Jillian Nguyen, Mojean Aria, Selina Zahednia, Rina Mousavi / Dir: Noora Niasari / Vertigo Releasing / 12