Where to watch
Soon at your home
A family man goes on a religious mission to cleanse Mashhad of street prostitutes, but resorts to murder when met with public indifference.
Trailer
Why watch this film?
Our suggestions
In Holy Spider, we follow family man Saeed as he embarks on his own religious quest - to "cleanse" the holy Iranian city of Mashhad of immoral and corrupt street prostitutes. After murdering several women, he grows ever more desperate about the lack of public interest in his divine mission.
"After directing the sensitive fantasy realism drama Border, Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi embraces another genre: suspense detective. In Sacred Spider, we follow a journalist (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) trying to uncover the identity of a serial killer, who is killing prostitutes in the sacred city of Mashhad. Even if suspense is not so much - the killer's identity is revealed in the first minutes of the footage - Sacred Spider remains full of tension. How? Only by showing how these women, even in an extreme vulnerable situation and being murdered under the same modus operandi, continue to be discredited by a society that simply ignores them. It is worth noting the great performance of Amir Ebrahimi, who carries the whole plot. Read more in our full review of Sacred Spider."