‘Leila’s Brothers’ Review: Iranian Star Taraneh Alidoosti Steers This Dense and Demanding Family Saga

An intimate affair. Britney Spears‘ family was not in attendance when she married Sam Asghari on Thursday, June 9, Us Weekly can confirm.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentGlobal arthouse movie streamer, producer and distributor MUBI has acquired all Turkish rights to Iranian director Saeed Roustaee’s timely Cannes title “Leila’s Brothers.”A female empowerment drama set against the backdrop of a family crushed by debts linked to international economic sanctions, “Leila’s Brothers” won the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci) prize for best film in Cannes’ main competition.  The film, which is Roustaee’s third feature, follows from his tense actioner “Just 6.5,” about a cop trying to pin down a drug lord.

Alicia Vikander, is a clever satire of the entertainment industry … with a psychological bent. Premiering Monday, June 6 at 9 p.m., the series is mostly in English with some French subtitles.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic“Deep down, you are an outlaw yourself,” a director tells his leading lady. “It’s what we share.” His star thanks him, taking the remark as a compliment, but insists she’s nowhere as daring as the character she’s tasked with playing.This moment, in the first episode of HBO’s new series “Irma Vep,” is tossed-off and casual; the actors playing auteur and actress, Vincent Macaigne and Alicia Vikander, are believably weary, film-industry warriors just trying to get through the conversation, and the day.

Manchester City left-back Oleksandr Zinchenko has admitted that he and his Ukraine teammates have been dreaming about reaching the World Cup after moving to within one win of the finals in Qatar.

This year’s dark horse in competition at Cannes is easily “Leila’s Brothers,” Iranian writer-director Saeed Roustaee’s third feature and worthy follow-up to his intense 2019 cop thriller “Just 6.5.” With hints of “The Godfather” and Arthur Miller evident throughout, the drama is a sprawling tale exploring dysfunctional family dynamics, economic hardships, and generational wealth. READ MORE: Cannes Film Festival 2022 Preview: 25 Must-See Films To Watch “Leila’s Brothers” follows the lives of a Tehran family as they struggle to stay afloat amidst financial hardships and complicated familial relationships.

They all hate each other, Leila (the magnificent Taraneh Alidoosti) tells her brother Alireza (Navid Mohammad Zadeh) when he returns to the family home. It is a rare visit; he works in an industrial plant somewhere on the other side of Iran. He isn’t going to tell his family that he has been laid off with the promise of pay that has never materialized; in the Tehran family that crowds Saeed Roustaee’s long and absorbing clan drama Leila’s Brothers, he is supposed to be the properly functioning son.

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.

The International Coalition For Filmmakers At Risk (ICFR) has demanded “an end to a growing environment of fear and insecurity” in Iran after two documentary creators were arrested then released on bail, preventing them from travelling or working.

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.

“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).

Alicia Vikander stuns on the red carpet in a metallic cooper dress at the premiere of Irma Vep during the 2022 Cannes Film Festival held at Palais des Festivals on Sunday (May 22) in Cannes, France.

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.

Ramin Setoodeh Executive Editor“Holy Spider,” a gritty drama about a real-life Iranian serial killer, stunned the Cannes Film Festival at its premiere on Sunday afternoon, earning a thunderous seven-minute standing ovation and bringing a jolt of electricity to what’s been a sleepy festival so far.The film, from Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi (“Border”), chronicles a killing spree in the streets of the religious city 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. But in one of many twists in this drama, the identity of the serial killer is revealed early on — he’s a war veteran named Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani), a seemingly normal family man who spends his nights picking up women on his motorcycle and brutally strangling them in his home as a religious cleansing ritual.

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.