Shayda: Nowruz in a Shelter

Noora Niasari, the Tehran-born filmmaker raised in Australia and based in Melbourne, was named one of the two recipients of the 2026 Academy Gold Fellowship for Women, alongside Tatti Ribeiro, IF Magazine reported on October 13. The one-year programme of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offers professional support, one-to-one mentorship and industry connections. The news is an occasion to revisit Shayda, her 2023 debut feature, which drew international critical attention with its story of an Iranian mother and daughter in Australia.

According to Sony Pictures Classics, its US distributor, Shayda follows an Iranian mother who takes refuge with her six-year-old daughter in an Australian women's shelter. Over Persian New Year, mother and daughter find comfort in Nowruz rituals, until her estranged husband re-enters their lives and threatens her path to freedom. IF Magazine reports that the story is set in 1995. Zar Amir Ebrahimi plays Shayda, Selina Zahednia her daughter Mona and Osamah Sami her husband Hossein. The film is mostly in Persian, and Cate Blanchett was among its executive producers.

The film draws on Niasari's childhood experiences and her mother's life. Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter calls it a tribute to the director's mother, and Anne Rutherford writes in Australian Book Review that the script was adapted from her mother's unpublished memoir and then fictionalised. The home videos over the end credits, Steve Erickson notes in The Arts Fuse, underscore the film's autobiographical origins.

Linden, who saw the film at Sundance, finds its force above all in "the quiet ferocity of Zar Amir Ebrahimi's performance" and her bond with the young Zahednia. Niasari and cinematographer Sherwin Akbarzadeh, she writes, move between shadowy menace and the bright play of Nowruz, and she praises Osamah Sami, who makes Hossein both menacing and pitiable rather than one-note. Her one complaint is that the sudden court-ordered visitation seems legally nonsensical, though, she adds, so are many real proceedings. Her verdict: "A fine balance of darkness and light."

Erickson stresses the role of Nowruz, reading its celebration in the film as, beyond a cultural bond, an assertion of Iranian identity against the authority of the theocracy. He admires Amir Ebrahimi's mix of inner strength and constant dread, but finds that "Shayda loses its narrative focus during its final third," borrowing elements of the thriller without fully becoming one, and that at almost two hours "the runtime starts to drag."

Peyton Robinson of RogerEbert.com is the most reserved, giving the film two and a half stars out of four. "The story of Shayda is moving, though ordinary," she writes; its structure is predictable and the film is carried by its two actresses rather than its plot. She finds the dialogue too on the nose and the script strongest in its silences, and singles out the dance scenes as bursts of release. Her main objection is the instability of its point of view: "what it seems to lack most is an equally crafted point of view," as the narrative shifts between a child's memory and the distanced gaze of an outside observer.

All three critics recognise Zar Amir Ebrahimi's performance and the importance of Niasari's personal experience, but they judge the film's structure differently. Linden praises its balance of menace and moments of light, Erickson finds that it loses cohesion in its final third, and Robinson, despite admiring the actors and the dance scenes, finds its point of view unstable. Shayda won the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance 2023, was Australia's submission for Best International Feature at the 96th Academy Awards and, IF Magazine reports, won the CinefestOZ Film Prize.

According to JustWatch, as checked on October 18, 2026, Shayda is available to buy or rent in the US on Amazon, Apple TV and Fandango At Home, and streams in Canada on Crave.

Sources: IF Magazine (Oct. 13, 2026; Sept. 3, 2023); Sony Pictures Classics; Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter (Jan. 20, 2023); Anne Rutherford, Australian Book Review (Oct. 2023); Steve Erickson, The Arts Fuse (Mar. 13, 2024); Peyton Robinson, RogerEbert.com (Mar. 1, 2024); Variety; Deadline; JustWatch.