Podcast Write-up placeholder Like most people, I’ve been a fan of Lily Amirpour since her film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, a stylishly mute black and white voray into Lily’s Iranian-American roots that was coined as the ‘first ever Iranian Vampire Western’. Followed up with the wonderful cannibal horror The Bad Batch, Lily’s latest feature is a Ring-like parody set in New Orleans titled Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (available on NOW TV and other streaming platforms). If this writer can suggest a thread to each of her works — it’s the outsider, the motel roving, larger than life tender hearted lunatic struggling to fit in.
As someone who fits her bill, I couldn’t recommend Lily’s films with more energy. Yet Amirpour is feeling mixed about publicity — and for good reason. Between promoting Mona Lisa, the American-based filmmaker has been calling out the ongoing Iranian protests: an eruption of civil disobedience that was sparked after a young Mahsa Amini was killed by Iran’s religious police for wearing an ‘improper’ hijab. A month in, and demands for secularism have been answered with brutal crackdowns and further violence by the regime; now, anarchy and unrest threaten to spread across Lily’s home like fire at an oil distillery.
I’m nervous, as the feeling radiates off Lily when we begin our interview. It’s morning in New York, but her room could be set in night. Not dark, but windowless. We exchange polite hellos — and I notice her tired eyes.
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