Ms. Ibrahimi, 41, won for “Holy Spider”, in which she plays a journalist trying to solve serial murders of prostitutes in the holy city of Mashhad.
Ms. Ibrahimi, 41, won for “Holy Spider”, in which she plays a journalist trying to solve serial murders of prostitutes in the holy city of Mashhad.
Iranian Tsar Amir Ibrahimi, who lives in exile after a stigma campaign about her love life, cried with joy when she won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday.
Ms. Ibrahimi, 41, won for “Holy Spider”, in which she plays a journalist trying to solve serial murders of prostitutes in the holy city of Mashhad.
“I have come a long way to be on this stage tonight. It was not an easy story,” he told the audience at the awards ceremony.
She said she was “saved by the cinema”.
“There was humiliation but there was cinema, there was solitude but there was cinema, there was darkness but there was cinema. Now I stand before you in the night of happiness.”
Directed by Danish-Iranian Ali Abbasi, “Holy Spider” is inspired by the true story of a working-class man who killed prostitutes in the early 2000s and became known as the “Spider Killer”.
Abbasi was not allowed to film in Iran and it was eventually shot in Jordan.
Ibrahimi became a star in Iran in her early twenties thanks to a supporting role in her longest-running soap opera, “Narges”.
But her life and career fell apart shortly after the show ended, when a sex tape leaked online in 2006 claimed to have featured her.