An exiled actress stars in a piercing portrait of Iran

By JAKE COYLE
AP Film Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Ninety-nine lashes and a prison sentence awaited Zar Amir Ebrahimi in 2008 when she decided to flee Iran. Ebrahimi’s only crime was sex. A videotape made privately with her then-partner had two years earlier been leaked by someone else, and spread widely. Ebrahimi, then a well-known TV star in Iran, was charged with having sexual relations outside wedlock. Ostracized and harassed, she fled to France. Now, 16 years later, Ebrahimi has dramatically resurfaced on the global stage. She stars in Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider,” playing a journalist investigating a serial killer in the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad who is murdering women and sex workers. At the Cannes Film Festival, Ebrahimi won best actress.