Alidoosti Among Top 10 Actresses

For her lead role in Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning film ‘The Salesman’, actress Taraneh Alidoosti, 33, has been selected by Tribeca Film Festival in New York as one of the 10 best film performances by an actress of early 2017.

In an attempt not to let “the exemplary screen performances disappear into the second-half of the year,” the American festival has chosen ten of the most impressive performances by an actress from the first six months of the year, each one a “captivating, character-specific triumph that is worth visiting (and revisiting) within the coming months”, the festival website (tribecafilm.com) reported.

The name of Iranian actress has appeared in the list along with world famous figures including Kirsten Dunst (for the movie ‘The Beguiled’), Salma Hayek (Beatriz at Dinner), Holly Hunter (The Big Sick) and Kristen Stewart (Personal Shopper) among others.

In the moral parable ‘The Salesman’, Alidoosti plays the role of Rana, a married actress who is assaulted by a stranger one night in a new apartment. While her husband, Emad (performed by Cannes award-winning actor Shahab Hosseini) attempts to determine the identity of the attacker, she struggles to cope with post-trauma stress.

Alidoosti delivers a stunning central role that earns the audience’s admiration for what she both does and does not do. She refuses to embroider the character with personal touches or make her exceptional in ways that transcend the confined events and traumatic revelations depicted within the film.

This daring lack of distinctiveness could conceivably run the risk of alienating the audience; however, the actress’s sterling, measured technique does not let it happen.

Her watchful restraint consummately traces the arc of every woman struggling to collect her bearings after a harrowing encounter, all the while privately pushing back against a role which she never intended to play - that of victim.

  In the Headlines

After ‘The Salesman’ premiered in competition in the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and collected rave reviews on its directorship, script and performances, Alidoosti’s name once again hit the headlines in late January when she announced she would not attend the 89th Academy Awards, where ‘The Salesman’ was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, to protest US President Donald Trump’s executive order on the temporary ban on visas to citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries including Iran.

As one of Iran’s most prominent actresses, her news of boycotting the Oscars went viral and was covered by several major international websites including Aljazeera, Daily Mail, the Independent, NBC News, the Guardian, Huffington Post, France 24 and Hollywood Reporter, among others.

Born in Tehran, Alidoosti began her acting career at age 17 with the leading role in ‘I’m Taraneh, 15’ (directed by Rasul Sadr Ameli, 2002). For her debut performance in the film, she won the Bronze Leopard for the Best Actress from the Locarno International Film Festival in 2002, as well as the Crystal Simorgh for the Best Actress from the 20th Fajr Film Festival, and became the youngest person ever to do so.

Since then she has maintained a steady but selective work flow in cinema. She has so far acted in 17 movies and one series.

She is mostly known for her choosy criteria in accepting challenging, dramatic roles, as exemplified by her long collaboration with Farhadi (four films), making her one of the most acclaimed actresses of her generation. A prominent actress in Iran, she has bagged many awards and accolades to her name.