Noora Niasari Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Danger is never very far away in Noora Niasari’s confident debut, a deeply personal tribute to a generation torn between tradition and modernity. Focusing on the title character, Shayda hangs on a vulnerable but powerful performance from Holy Spider’s Zar Amir Ebrahimi as an Iranian divorcée hiding out from her abusive ex, who may or may not be planning to smuggle their daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia) back to Iran.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Shayda,” a breakout indie movie from Noora Niasari, and Kitty Green’s high-temperature drama “The Royal Hotel” were named best film winners at the annual SPA Awards, presented by the Screen Producers Australia association. The ceremony took place Thursday at Queensland’s Gold Coast, during the annual Screen Forever conference. The event was hosted by actor and comedian Matt Okine. Production company Werner Film, which this week announced its acquisition by the BBC, took three awards including the coveted Media Super Production Business of the year prize. “It’s clear that our production community continues to thrive in the face of a rapidly changing landscape.

Julio Torres’s directorial debut Problemista from A24 posted the highest per-screen average of the weekend with a solid limited opening, grossing $140.9k on five screens in New York and LA with multiple sold out Q&As.

Two well-reviewed indies are taking a bow in limited release in the shadow of Dune, A24’s Problemista by Julio Torres, and Shayda from Sony Pictures Classics, the feature debut of Noora Niasari.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Barbenheimer” forever! Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan, the filmmakers behind last summer’s blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” are among the best feature film director nominees at the 76th annual DGA Awards. The Directors Guild of America nominated five directors in total, including Martin Scorsese for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Yorgos Lanthimos for “Poor Things” and Alexander Payne for “The Holdovers.” “In a year full of so many extraordinary films, DGA members have nominated an incredible group of gifted storytellers,” Directors Guild of America president Lesli Linka Glatter said in a statement.

The Directors Guild of America has nominated Barbie‘s Greta Gerwig, Oppenheimer‘s Christopher Nolan, Poor Things’ Yorgos Lanthimos, Killers of the Flower Moon’s Martin Scorsese and The Holdovers’ Alexander Payne for the top feature film prize at its 76th annual DGA Awards. See the full list below.

For Iranian-Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari, her debut feature Shayda has served as an authentic and honest exploration into her own personal childhood trauma. The film, which is being released by Sony Pictures Classics and won the World Cinema Dramatic Competition Audience Award in Sundance earlier this year, is Australia’s Oscar submission for the Best International Feature Oscar.

Sometimes when you have a terrific film but it doesn’t quite have the hook for mainstream audiences, you sometimes need a catchy ace in the hole. And that’s exactly what the Australian film “Shayda” has in its executive producers, in this case, a little actor you may know named Cate Blanchett, plus her husband and producing partner Andrew Upton and Coco Francini.

Australia has selected Shayda, from Iranian-Australian debut writer and director Noora Niasari, as its submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar race.

EXCLUSIVE: Two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, who is an executive producer on Noora Niasari’s debut film Shayda, will not be attending the pic’s Aug. 12 closing night at the Locarno Film Festival out of support for the SAG-AFTRA Strike. Niasari and the movie’s star Zar Amir Ebrahimi will still attend the movie’s play at Locarno.

The Locarno Film Festival has clarified the situation with regards to which invited  SAG-AFTRA members will be attending.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Sakamoto Ryuichi, the Japanese film composer and music supervisor who died in March, has been posthumously named as the recipient of the Jecheon Film Music Award at the 19th Jecheon International Music & Film Festival (Aug. 10-15). Sakamoto won Academy Awards and Golden Globes for his score for “The Last Emperor” and has other credits including “The Sheltering Sky,” “Railroad Man,” “The Revenant,” “Call Me By Your Name” and “The Fortress.”Abrai Joji from Commons the music label established jointly with Sakamoto, and Yutaka Toyama from Promax, which had produced Sakamoto’s concerts since 1986, will visit the festival. Additionally, a tribute concert will be held on Aug. 12 at the Jecheon Stadium.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Melbourne International Film Festival has unveiled the full lineup for its 2023 edition, with “Shayda,” by Australian-Iranian director Noora Niasari, set as the opening title. The festival will run as a live event August 3-20, at venues around the city and its suburbs, and online Aug 18 – 27. The hybrid format was developed during the COVID pandemic and MIFF found it useful as a tool to reach further away audiences and wider demographics than a strictly in-theater edition. The ‘Bright Horizons’ competition section open to films by first- or second-time feature directors contains an 11-title mix of new and recently-debuted works.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent For his third edition at the helm, Locarno Film Festival artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro has assembled a wide spectrum of films that “do not resemble each other in terms of tone or form” while reflecting “the world in all its expressions and manifestations,” he tells Variety. This boundless range is best exemplified by the fact that starkly surrealist Filipino arthouse star Lav Díaz’s latest work, “Essential Truths of the Lake,” will be vying for the fest’s Golden Leopard alongside fare that, at least on paper, appears much lighter. This includes U.S. director Bob Byington’s indie comedy “Lousy Carter” and Estonian helmer Rainer Sarnet’s “The Invisible Flight,” which Nazzaro says  “mixes Kung Fu, hard rock and the Orthodox Church.”

Marta Balaga Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival, Europe’s biggest mid-Summer movie event, has announced its lineup, welcoming recognizable names to its main competition, from Filipino auteur Lav Diaz (“Essential Truths of the Lake”) to Romanian powerhouse Radu Jude, who will show “Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World.” As already announced, Cate Blanchett and Zar Amir Ebrahimi are set to attend the Locarno Film Festival’s closing night to promote the European launch of Iranian-Australian director Noora Niasari’s debut film “Shayda.” Among the titles selected for Locarno’s more broad-audience-friendly Piazza Grande lineup, Justine Triet will attend with her Cannes Palme’ d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall,” along with Ken Loach and his “The Old Oak.”

The 76th edition of the Locarno Film Festival will close with a screening of the Sundance Competiton pic Shayda attended by the film’s star Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Holy Spider) and Exec Producer Cate Blanchett.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Cate Blanchett and Zar Amir Ebrahimi are set to attend the Locarno Film Festival’s closing night to promote the European launch of Iranian-Australian director Noora Niasari’s debut film “Shayda.” Blanchett is an executive producer on the drama, which world premiered at Sundance and scored the Utah festival’s audience award. “Shayda” stars Ebrahimi – who broke out last year as a Cannes prizewinner for her role in “Holy Spider” – as a domestic violence survivor during the ’90s in Australia who demands a free life on her own terms, away from the shadow of her abusive husband. Variety critic Tomris Laffly in her review praised Ebrahimi’s turn in “Shayda” as a “quietly commanding performance” and underlined the film’s “unmistakably feminine spirit of perseverance, one that runs wild and free in this promising debut.”

Angelique Jackson It’s a Sunday evening in London in early February and two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett is freshly changed from an award show when she logs onto a Zoom with Noora Niasari, the writer and director behind “Shayda,” the powerful Sundance award-winning film executive produced by Dirty Films, the production company co-founded by Blanchett. “I’m so happy. It’s fantastic. It’s great for Todd [Field], it’s so great for the film,” Blanchett says as she fields congratulations on accepting the London Critics Circle’s best actress prize. “And I just read that Viola Davis became an EGOT!” The topic of awards is the conversation du jour this time of year because awards are capital in the entertainment business — and Blanchett knows a thing or two about this topic, with eight Oscar nominations to her name. Ultimately, the accolades help a film reach audiences far and wide. In the case of “Shayda,” for example, winning the World Dramatic Competition’s audience elevates the film from an intimate production that might’ve only sparked in Australia to a global platform, especially now that it has a major distributor.

A few weeks after Zar Amir-Ebrahimi won the Best Actress Award in Cannes for her performance as journalist Arezoo Rahimi in crime thriller Holy Spider, the Iranian-French actor flew to Melbourne, Australia, to take part in what was set to be another urgent story from an Iranian filmmaker: Noora Niasari’s debut feature Shayda. 

Iranian-Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari (Waterfall, 17 Years and a Day) has been signed on to adapt and direct Mahsa Rahmani Noble’s novel Raya.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorKrasnoff/Foster Entertainment has partnered with Sister, the production company founded by Elisabeth Murdoch, Stacey Snider and Jane Featherstone, on the feature film “Raya,” based on the novel by Mahsa Rahmani Noble.