Tatami gets a grip on Iran’s quest for judo gold
An Iranian woman and her coach travel to the Judo World Championship intent on bringing home Iran’s first gold medal in Tatami, one of the offerings at this year’s Brisbane International Film Festival
When Iranian French actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi travelled to Melbourne to make Noora Niasari’s Australian film Shayda, she was in many ways re-living the early life of her film director mother in a Brisbane women’s shelter.
Though Amir Ebrahimi hardly had time to travel around Australia, let alone to Brisbane. “I was too busy making this very intense film, but I hope to come back one day,” she says.
Shayda ultimately won the audience award in the world dramatic section of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, Ebrahimi won for best actress in the Australian Critics Circle awards and Anousha Zarkesh won for best casting at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards.
Amir Ebrahimi had been cast in Shayda before she won the Cannes best actress prize for Holy Spider, directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, who is currently in the spotlight as the director of The Apprentice. In her Cannes acceptance speech, she highlighted the plight of women in Iran.
As one of the country’s most famous actresses, she’d had her own run-in with the Iranian authorities after a 2006 sex tape with her boyfriend was leaked online and released on DVD. Fearing prison, she fled Iran and has since been living in exile in France.
After making short films in France, Amir Ebrahimi has co-directed her first feature, Tatami, with Israel’s Los Angeles-based Guy Nattiv (Golda).
The film, which won the special jury prize at the Tokyo Film Festival – where Amir Ebrahimi also won for best actress – will have its Australian premiere at the Brisbane International Film Festival before screening at the Jewish International Film Festival.
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Like Shayda, the film is a gem and as The Hollywood Reporter puts it, “the Iranian Israeli sports drama delivers a timely punch”. The film premiered at last year’s Venice Film Festival just before the October 7 Iran-backed Hamas attack on Israel.
Filmed in black-and-white, Tatami follows Iranian national Judo champion Leila Hosseini (Iranian-Chilean Arienne Mandi) competing at the World Judo Championships in Tbilisi, Georgia, where she is with her coach, Amir Ebrahimi’s Maryam Ghanbari. Maryam is being coerced by the Iranian authorities, all the way up to the Supreme Leader, to have Leila throw the match as she would most likely end up in the final with the talented reigning Israeli champ, so could possibly lose to the enemy.
The film draws on the experiences of Iranian athletes in similar situations.
“When I started writing the screenplay with Iranian Eltham Erfani, we followed a few women athletes who went through a similar story,” Nattiv explains.
“The first one was Sadaf Khadem, who was the first Iranian boxer who rebelled against the regime and moved to France and formed her own kind of freedom. Then there was the Olympic taekwondo champion Kimia Alizadeh, who was the face of Iran. She said, like, enough of this bullshit, and took off her hijab and together with her coach moved to Germany.
“That was a shock to Iran, and more and more women and men were doing rebellious acts. That was before the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini. These athletes sparked something in me to write the film, but obviously I’m Israeli, so I’m not the person to tell this story alone. I decided to offer Zar (Amir Ebrahimi) to come in to write and make the film together.”
The pair were surprised to discover how much they had in common, including the same taste in music, art, food and movies.
“In the ’70s before the revolution Israeli bands played in Iranian discotheques and there was an amazing relationship between the two countries,” Nattiv recalls. “People could enjoy each other. It took five minutes to understand that Zar and I could get along. We shared the same vision.”
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Adds Amir Ebrahimi: “There was no ego and I think that was really important. Initially I was more concentrated on the script, the acting and authenticity and Guy (Nattiv) was more focused on the camera and the artistic vision. But then everything got mixed up as we were always together watching on set. We could read each other from just one look and it was very smooth, very beautiful.”
Tatami, named after the term for the traditional Japanese mat used in judo matches, was actually filmed in Tbilisi, chosen for its close proximity to both Iran and Israel. Bringing on the Georgian national coach as an advisor, they filmed in secrecy for three months and spoke English to avoid attracting attention. The match commentary is in an actual Tbilisi stadium and is provided by real British commentators who usually work at the Judo World Championships. The action is visceral and raw.
“We wanted you to be with the judoka and not see it from afar,” explains Nattiv, who admits to inspiration from Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. “So every move they make the camera makes with them. You could feel that the fall is a real fall.”
Back in Iran, in the film, Leila’s family, including her husband, are eagerly watching the match together with Iranian rapper Justina, who also provides music on the soundtrack.
“Justina is an actress, too, so we had this wonderful chance to work with her,” Amir Ebrahimi says. “She now lives in Sweden and, you know, it’s forbidden for women to sing in Iran. If they want to follow their ambition they have to leave the country. And she managed somehow to live in Georgia for two years before moving to Sweden. All the film’s rap moments are what she’s been doing in recent years. Rap is about resisting, so it’s about how these women rappers are resisting in Iran.”
Amir Ebrahimi has also made an Israeli film, Eran Riklis’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, with her close friend and fellow Paris-based Iranian exile, Golshifteh Farahani, who starred with Chris Hemsworth in the Extraction movies.
“We always wanted to do a film together and she suggested me for a small role,” Amir Ebrahimi says. “It’s a true story about a female student community and their professor reading forbidden Western classics in revolutionary Iran and where you see the story of Iran through their eyes. It’s very timely.”
While she hopes to make a film about her own horrific experience – “this will probably be my last Iranian story then I’ll be finished with Iran” – for his next project Harmonia Nattiv is also drawing on his own history.
“It’s a movie about my Holocaust survivor grandmother and it’s very ambitious,” he says.
Incredibly, Naomi Watts, an actress he loves, will play his grandmother in the film, which follows his mother and aunt as they attempt to extract her from a cult, which eventually moved from Jerusalem to Virginia in the US. Bella Ramsey (The Last of Us) and another Aussie, Odessa Young, will play her daughters.
Tatami screens at BIFF on October 25 and 30 and on November 2, biff.com.au; The film screens nationally from October 28 as part of the Jewish International Film Festival.
Helen Barlow is a Paris-based Australian freelance journalist and critic. In 2019, she received the La Plume d’Or for her services to French cinema.