Iranian Serial Killer Movie ‘Holy Spider’ — Which Pushes Envelope With Nudity, Sex and Graphic Strangling Scenes — Stuns Cannes

Taron Egerton is going deep undercover as a snitch in maximum security prison to entice a confession out of a suspected serial killer in a bid for his own early release in the trailer for “Black Bird.”The Apple TV+ series, which debuts with two episodes on July 8, finds Egerton playing Jimmy Keene, a decorated policeman’s son (Ray Liotta), who is sentenced to 10 years behind bars. But, with the authorities needing help in solving a series of gruesome murders, and suspect Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) in supermax, Keene is offered the opportunity to go to the prison for the criminally insane, and elicit a confession.Things get hairy for Egerton’s Keene as the trailer shows, as he deals with violence, the mentally ill and solitary confinement.New episodes of the six-episode psychological thriller will drop every Friday though August 5.Author Dennis Lehane developed and wrote the drama, which is inspired by actual events, and is executive producer.The series stars “Rocketman” alum Egerton, Hauser, Greg Kinnear as Brian Miller, Sepideh Moafi as Lauren McCauley and Liotta as Jimmy Keene’s father, Big Jim Keene. “Black Bird” is based on the true crime memoir “In with the Devil: A  Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption” by James Keene and Hillel Levin.Michaël R.

Naman Ramachandran Streamer and distributor MUBI has acquired Ali Abbasi’s Cannes Film Festival competition title “Holy Spider” for the U.K., Ireland, Latin America and Malaysia. The film will be released theatrically followed by an exclusive MUBI streaming release. The film follows family man Saeed as he embarks on his own religious quest — to “cleanse” the holy Iranian city of Mashhad of immoral and corrupt street prostitutes.

MUBI has acquired rights to Cannes hit Holy Spider for the UK, Ireland, LatAm and Malaysia.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentDanish-Iranian director Ali Abbasi’s boundary-pushing serial killer thriller “Holy Spider has been acquired by U.S. sales and distribution company Utopia for North America.Based on a real Iranian crime case, “Holy Spider” – which made a major splash when it premiered in the Cannes competition on Sunday – is about a family man named Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani) who becomes a serial killer as he embarks on his own religious quest to “cleanse” the holy Iranian city of Mashhad of street prostitutes. Pic chronicles a killing spree in the streets of Mashhad, where 16 prostitutes were found dead from 2000 to 2001.  A local journalist, Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi), is trying to crack the case as she grows frustrated by the police’s apathy toward finding the murderer.

EXCLUSIVE: Utopia has finalized its North American deal for Cannes Competition pic Holy Spider, the noir thriller from Danish-Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi. We told you the deal was all but there a couple of days ago.

“I actually related to the character in a lot of ways, from her way of making new friends in unconventional places, and feeling a little isolated and not understood sometimes,” Selena Gomez tells Deadline’s Crew Call about what drew her to the part of Mabel Mora in Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building. 

A drastic departure from his prior films “Border” and “Shelley,” Ali Abbasi’s newest film, “Holy Spider,” draws inspiration from the 2000-2001 crimes and subsequent trial of Saeed Hanaei (played here by Mehdi Bajestani), a war veteran-turned-serial killer in the Iranian city of Mashhad who murdered 16 sex workers, claiming that he was cleansing the holy city of sinners and corruption in the name of Islam.

Forbes). “I know we are human beings and that we are very complicated, and the power of art is that it knows no color. Because human beings, when they sit and watch art they want to feel less alone.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefIranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi insists that his Cannes competition film “Holy Spider” is not intended to be a controversial truth telling. Rather, he is telling the truth through a fictional interpretation of real events. The film chronicles a killing spree in the streets of the religious city of Mashhad, where 16 prostitutes were found dead between 2000 and 2001.“I am not a big fan of serial killers or serial killer movies,” Abbasi said May 23 at the Cannes Film Festival.

“We didn’t do the movie to highlight women’s conditions in Iran, we didn’t do the movie to do activist work,” exclaimed Swedish-Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi about his latest in competition Cannes Film Festival title, Holy Spider at the pic’s press conference this morning.

unleashed smoke bombs and unrolled a list of murdered women just before the world premiere of Ali Abbasi’s serial-killer drama “Holy Spider.” And if the demonstration’s cause was only too just, its context was all too uncommon, since these protesters were seemingly there to support, not oppose, Abbasi’s violent and disturbing film. To follow up his Un Certain Regard-winning “Border,” the Iran-born Denmark-based director has burrowed into a chilling bit of true-crime from his native country, reimagining the 2001 case of a religious fanatic who slaughtered 16 young women and using that premise to explore systemic misogyny writ large. He does so by turning the murder thriller upside down, telling a story where the killer’s identify is never in doubt and his intentions are always crystal clear, and where the greatest source of tension comes from wondering whether anyone in power will lift a finger to stop him. The killer in this case is middle-aged construction worker Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani).

EXCLUSIVE: Holy Spider, the Ali Abbasi-directed Iranian serial killer thriller, is nearing a deal for U.S. rights with Utopia, the U.S. sales and distribution firm owned by Robert Schwartzman and Cole Harper. The provocative Cannes Competition film premiered today on the Croisette to strong applause.

Jessica Kiang It is hard to watch the brutalization of women on screen, especially when you know it is a re-creation of an actual crime. But it is harder still — rightly, valuably so — if you’ve been made to notice the way this woman’s lipstick is smeared over her cracked lips, if you’ve seen the old bruises that mottle that woman’s body beneath her chador, or watched her carefully stash her flats in a crinkled plastic bag as she switches into heels in a dingy bathroom.

Sometimes it hardly matters whether we know a story is based on truth or not. Watching Ali Abbasi’s thunderously damning Holy Spider, on the other hand, it drives a wedge into your mind knowing that a serial killer really did terrorize the Iranian holy city of Mashhad in the early 2000s, that he killed 16 street prostitutes, that there were police who conspired to help him escape and that there were people in Iran — a lot of people, he keeps assuring his family — who were on the murderer’s side. He was doing God’s work.

stormed the Cannes red carpet donned in body paint to disrupt the “Three Thousand Years of Longing” premiere, a new protest erupted at the start of the red carpet for competition title “Holy Spider,” in which a group of women held smoke bombs and a massive poster — though this time the demonstration appears to have been pre-planned. The group involved in the demonstration is Les Colleuses, a guerilla feminist movement in France.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterA group of women protestors staged a dramatic scene at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, releasing plumes of smoke from handheld devices and displaying a long banner for the global press.At the premiere of “Holy Spider,” director Ali Abbasi’s female-centered thriller, roughly 12 women in formalwear gathered on the famed stairs of the festival’s Grand Palais with raised fists — filling the space with thick black smoke and holding a long scroll of women’s names.Security seemed unfazed by the event, allowing the protestors to be filmed and photographed. One insider close to the production said the protest was not a coordinated stunt to promote the film, about a journalist who travels to the Iranian holy city of Mashhad to investigate a serial killer murdering sex workers.