Shayda

Director: Noora Niasari

2023 / 117min / DCP

Set over the course of the Persian Nowruz holiday, Niasari’s quietly wrenching drama, drawn from memories of the writer-director’s own early life, finds Amir giving a marvelously nuanced performance in its title role, playing an Iranian immigrant in Australia who, while trying to extricate herself from an abusive marriage that continues to pose a looming threat to her, has temporarily landed in a women’s shelter with her six-year-old daughter, mother and child both drawing sustenance from the makeshift community around them. “Demonstrates an astounding control of pacing and mood… Conveys isolation or danger in small visual cues… An understated chronicle of female conviction.” —The New York Times