“Tatami” is a trailblazing movie.
It’s the first ever feature film collaboration between an Iranian director and an Israeli one; Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guy Nattiv (“Golda”) and Iranian-French actress-turned-director Zar Amir Ebrahimi (star of “Holy Spider”) worked together to create this political thriller.
At the center of “Tatami,” named after the mats that adorn classic Japanese rooms, on which judo matches take place, is Arienne Mandi’s Leila Hosseini, an accomplished, passionate Iranian athlete.
Hosseini travels to Tbilisi, Georgia, to compete in the World Judo Championships along with the Iranian judo team and her coach, Maryam, played by Amir Ebrahimi. Hosseini stands a real chance to bring home the championship title for her weight class — what would be Iran’s first gold medal — but the Islamic Republic threatens both her and her coach, demanding she forfeit the match.
The reason? She’s likely to go against the Israeli competitor, something that his forbidden for Iranian athletes.
In the film, we see Hosseini’s relationship with her Israeli competitor Shani Lavi (Lir Katz) is amiable and personable. Lavi knows about Hosseini’s son, and Hosseini knows about Lavi’s paramours. The film shows the humanity in each athlete, beyond flags and craven politicians and bombs.
The story of “Tatami” is fictional, yet it is deeply rooted in the lives of real Iranian female athletes.
There’s Sadaf Khadem, the first Iranian boxer to participate in a match outside Iran, who could not return to her home country out of fear of arrest after her first match in France.
There’s Elnaz Rekabi, who participated in the 2022 IFSC Climbing Asian Championships in Seoul without her hijab amid the fiery protests surrounding the killing of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who was beaten for “improperly” wearing her hijab and later died from her wounds. (Rekabi later posted that the head covering fell off on her social media, but reports came out that her confession was forced).
There’s Taekwando fighter Kimia Alizadeh, the country’s only female Olympic medalist in history, who defected from Iran in 2020, sharing: “I am one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran who they have been playing with for years.”
Their tales, and this movie, are a reminder of the terrible and sometimes deadly price Iranian women who live in Iran have to face every day.
It’s hard to deny the particularly pertinent timing of “Tatami.” It comes out at a time when both directors’ homelands are under missile fire from the other’s nation, as our news programs and social media feeds are filled with images of destruction from both Israel and Iran.
And while the movie is worth watching simply because it is compelling, great cinema, it also serves as a touching reminder of what we can do when we see the humanity in each other.
“Tatami” is out in select theaters now. You can join a conversation with its co-director, Guy Nattiv this Sunday at 7 p.m. ET.
