SHAYDA - Mark Reviews Movies

Shayda, Sony Pictures Classics

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 30, 2023

There's potential danger everywhere in Shayda. The story concerns an Iranian woman and her young daughter, who live in a women's shelter in Australia circa 1995. The woman and her husband came to this country from their homeland so that he could complete a college education abroad. That was her plan, too, but then, she became a mother. Her national scholarship was canceled, and the husband became increasingly abusive.

That's the only back story we need for writer/director Noora Niasari's feature debut, which envisions the whole of the life of its eponymous character as a kind of prison. Yes, the shelter enables Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) to leave the home whenever she wants, in order to do any shopping or spend time with any friends who live in the area. How can she, really, though?

The husband is still out there, somewhere, and certainly looking for Shayda and their 6-year-old daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia). There's currently a custody battle taking place in the local court system, and as Shayda speaks more and more on the record about her husband's abusive actions, the matter seems to be moving in her favor. What kind of man is the husband, though? Her account of his abuse is enough to tell us everything we could want or need to know. He can't stop himself from inflicting such harm on his wife and traumatizing his young daughter, but will any court order or police threat be able to prevent him from trying again? How desperate and dangerous is this man?

This is Shayda's story, to be sure, and told with a strong sense of the specific kind of nightmare this woman's existence has become. Anything out of the ordinary—a car parked outside the house, a person acknowledging even the most basic recognition of Shayda, someone looking sideways or back at her when she's out in public—is cause for suspicion (Amir Ebrahimi's performance captures that fear, as well as Shayda's determination to escape it, with potency). After all, Shayda isn't alone in this other country, and neither is her husband.

There are people they know from Iran living here, and they know the couple's story, too. Well, they know the story as related by Hossein (Osamah Sami), the husband, or with the cultural perspective that a wife must be loyal, dutiful, and obedient to her husband.

Some of them, including her own mother, believe that Shayda has made a mistake in trying to leave Hossein or, worse, that she should be ostracized or even punished for daring to do so. Even a translator, helping to make sure that Shayda's statement to the court about one instance of abuse is accurate, knows who Shayda is, even though the phone call is meant to be anonymous. There are eyes and ears potentially everywhere.

All it would take for things to go very wrong would be for one of those people to spot Shayda and tell Hossein some detail that's unknown to him. If he's desperate and angry enough, he could find his wife, and we already know the violence of which of he's capable.

To call this film a thriller feels both simplistic, because the subject matter and Niasari's approach to storytelling are too realistic to limit it so, and accurate, because that does describe the general mood of tension that's created here. It's amplified, of course, by the fact that Shayda isn't alone in the shelter, either. All of these women, even the ones who look down upon Shayda, are in a similar situation as her, and while we might not know all of their stories, we do get to know one or two here and there (The son of one woman, played by Eve Morey, was abducted by her ex and has been missing for more than two years). Beyond that shared experience is also something else they share: the constant sense of dread.

A threat to one, after all, could be a threat to all. If Hossein is out there and getting closer to Shayda, there are other husbands, boyfriends, or exes somewhere and possibly looking, too.

Hossein is able to get closer because of a court-mandated visitation once a week, meaning Shayda is forced to leave the shelter with her daughter so that Hossein can spend a few unsupervised hours with Mona (An unsettling opening scene has the mother and the shelter's owner, played by Leah Purcell, training the girl what to do if her father takes her to the airport). That becomes the minor thrust of a plot, as Shayda drops off Mona at a local mall with Hossein, waits for her daughter, and tries to have something of a normal life in the meantime. Upon returning to the shelter with Mona, Shayda worries about the next time and if—or, more likely, when—Hossein will drop the pleasantries and reveal his true nature again.

It doesn't take long, because Shayda does spend time with a friend (played by Rina Mousavi) from college and the friend's Canadian cousin Farhad (Mojean Aria). People notice. Rumors spread, and eventually, Hossein hears the gossip, too. He reacts exactly as Shayda anticipates and as we, caught up so fully in the character's past and her potential to move on from it, dread.

Shayda is an intense and disturbing film, particularly in its unapologetic depictions of Hossein and the whispering circle of judgment that surrounds Shayda in places where she should feel at home. It's also notably empathetic in the way it portrays Shayda's terror and quiet hope that, one day, it might be behind her and her daughter.

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