In Contention

Category: Interviews

  • INTERVIEW: ‘Valentino: The Last Emperor’ director Matt Tyrnauer

    Matt TyrnauerFor 17 years, Matt Tyrnauer worked for Vanity Fair writing up profiles of major artists and pop culture figures such as architect Frank Gehry, producer Robert Evans, writer Bret Easton Ellis, actor Greg Kinnear, designer Tommy Hilfiger, Martha Stewart (her post-prison cover story) and legendary designer Valentino Garavani.

    That final name has made an impact on his life that will alter the course of his career as an artist, and may just land him an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary.

    Having studied film in college, a life in the cinema was never out of the realm of possibility for Tyrnauer, though his work at Vanity Fair consumed a great deal of his life through the last two decades. When he decided to make a film about Garavani, he did so with an abandon that suggests a fierce passion for his subject and deep belief in what he was doing as an artist.  “Valentino: The Last Emperor” was the result.

    The director admits there were times he did not know what he was doing, in particular when it came to distribution, but that flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pants sensation seems to have served this likable young man very well. Confidence in his film, that it was a truthful representation of the inner world of Garavani, would also help him when his subject disliked the film upon first viewing. Garavani ultimately needed the reassurance of a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival to convince him otherwise.

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Disgrace’ star Jessica Haines

    Jessica HainesWhen I begin my phone conversation with Jessica Haines by telling her how insistently I prodded her publicist to set up our interview – the reverse is so often the case – she responds with a bashful laugh. “I can believe that,” she says, in a warm South African drawl. “Not many journalists have bothered tracking me down to Tunis!”

    Haines sounds endearingly surprised that anyone might be interested in her away from the cinema screen, where she made such a startling arrival this year in Steve Jacobs’s “Disgrace” – which opens in the UK today, on the heels of an all-too-brief Stateside run in the fall.

    This speaks both to the 30 year-old newcomer’s natural humility – if she is aware of just how good she is, she certainly hides it well – and her relative unfamiliarity with the ropes of the industry.

    As if to literalize the point of just how far removed Haines is from Hollywood, I learn that she is in Tunisia not, as I had assumed, on some remote location shoot, but for a decidedly simpler reason: it’s where she lives, thanks to her husband’s banking career.

    “I don’t really know where to call home at the moment,” she says. “My family’s in Natal [the East Coast of South Africa], but I studied in Cape Town and do a lot of work in Johannesburg. My husband’s job is taking us from Tunisia to Kenya soon. I’m just flying in and out all the time.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Jeff Bridges

    Jeff BridgesFor actor Jeff Bridges, whose career has already spanned five decades, Scott Cooper’s “Crazy Heart” was something of a homecoming and, the actor says, “a dream come true.”

    Bridges stars in the film as Bad Blake, a ramblin’ country-western singer who travels the Southwest playing dive after dive, cut from the same cloth as Hank Williams Jr., maybe, or Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, etc. A guitarist in his own right, Bridges was eager to take on a film so concerned with music, but was wary of underwhelming after the example set by another music-themed film from his past, Steve Kloves’s “The Fabulous Baker Boys” from 1989.

    “What they did with that movie I thought was so wonderful that to do another music movie and not match that, it’s a pretty high bar there, so I was concerned about that,” Bridges says over lunch in Beverly Hills one November afternoon. “There were several music scripts that came down the pike, and sometimes it would have lyrics or little samples and it wouldn’t be right. And this one had no music. Then I thought maybe I could write the music, or my friend, but then, you know, I was busy, so I didn’t focus on it.”

    Indeed, Bridges is quick to admit that he spends a great deal of his energy steering clear of new projects. It might be a phobia of commitment on one hand, but on the other, he’s a man who likes to keep his options open. Signing onto a new film means missing the chance to work on any number of other projects that might ultimately interest him more.

    But “Crazy Heart” was a different story, especially once his good friend T Bone Burnett got involved as producer, music consultant and composer.

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  • INTERVIEW: Woody Harrelson

    Woody HarrelsonWoody Harrelson is running behind…about a half an hour behind.  This after a number of delays and schedule changes throughout the week.  When he strolls nonchalantly out onto the rooftop spread of a posh West Hollywood hotel, you can see why.  It’s not irresponsibility.  It’s not eccentric nuisance.  The guy just marches to his own drummer, and certainly, to his own beat.

    Publicity handler in tow, Harrelson moves and speaks purposefully, casual, always relaxed (though one might have fun speculating why that is).  Some may get him to say sensational things, but that’s not the M.O. of the interviewer he’s chatting with this afternoon.  So the perching hawk to my left, giving him a sharp look when he offers harmless jokes that might be seen as tasteless, isn’t exactly necessary.

    “Why don’t you let us talk alone,” he finally says, half-way through — respectfully, but sincerely.  He’s a man who seems to enjoy a chat, no matter how much it might push the rest of his schedule back.  And he’d certainly prefer to engage in one without that kind of oversight.

    Ostensibly his press rounds as of late are for the Oren Moverman film “The Messenger.” Appearances on The Colbert Report and, immediately following our encounter, The Late Late Show are popping up left and right.  He’s on the cover of this month’s Venice magazine.  But he’s also given a pair of zany performances in genre films this year that are worth discussing for the versatility they illuminate in his work.

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  • Hillcoat on ‘The Road,’ Mortensen from Telluride, featurette

    (Courtesy: MakingOf)

    And while we’re at it, with the film hitting limited release this weekend, it seems only apt to point you to my interview with Viggo Mortensen out of Telluride in September.  Give that a listen here or via the player below.  Check out a featurette on the film after the jump.

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  • INTERVIEW: Willem Dafoe

    Willem DafoeI have thought about little else since seeing Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist” at TIFF a few months ago.  The astonishing, beautiful images are in my head once a day, the performances have never strayed from my mind. At this writing I still do not know if I liked the film, but I do feel it is an important work of art that makes tough demands on the audience, as all fine art should.

    The subject matter is difficult, the images tough, the well-documented graphic imagery very hard to watch, and the characters not particularly likable.  Yet I was drawn into the film.  I cannot remember in the history of the cinema a more profound portrayal of grief and all its agonies than what Von Trier has given us here.

    This kind of brutally honest acting takes a great deal of courage, but Willem Dafoe has always been a brave actor, willing to do just about anything it takes to get to the heart of his characters. Twice he has been nominated for an Oscar, the first time for his doomed Elias in Oliver Stone’s “Platoon,” the second as Max Schreck, maybe a vampire, maybe not, in “Shadow of the Vampire.”

    In between he has given an array of superb performances, topped by his astonishing turn as the conflicted Messiah for Martin Scorsese in “The Last Temptation of Christ,” one of the most controversial films of the 1980s. Dafoe has never shied away from playing dislikable characters, such as his hateful Bobby Peru in “Wild at Heart,” but he can also be shockingly gentle, as we saw in “Tom and Viv.” He is the complete movie actor: as comfortable in blockbusters like “Spider-Man” as he is in independent cinema such as “Antichrist.” All he asks for is a challenge.

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  • Wes Anderson and friends on ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’

    Fantastic Mr. Fox“The reason Roald wrote such wonderful children’s books was that he could think like a child. Wes has that capacity too.”

    With this statement, at a cozy round-table interview in the dining room of bucolic Dahl homestead Gipsy House, Liccy Dahl makes clear her endorsement of Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” the auteur’s oddball adaptation of the beloved children’s book by her late husband, which opened in limited release on Friday.

    Sitting beside her, the lank-haired, nattily suited Anderson blushes slightly and peers down at the table. They make a curious pair of collaborators, the dandy American hipster and the gentle British countrywoman, but the sincere affection between them is plain to see, as is Dahl’s genuine excitement about the film.

    “Things have been changed and embroidered in the film, but the magic hasn’t been taken away,” says Dahl, adding that Anderson’s trans-Atlantic take on the story (its animal characters live in England, but speak and behave as Americans) is appropriate given the international appeal of her husband’s work. “The essence of the story stays the same: good versus bad, the survival of a starving family.”

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘The Informant!’ writer Scott Z. Burns

    Scott Z. BurnsFor Scott Z. Burns, the best way to tell the story of a compulsive liar was to take some liberties with the truth himself.

    “I’ve always been fascinated by lies … we all are,” the cheerfully forthright screenwriter tells me of his attraction to the story behind “The Informant!,” Steven Soderbergh’s playfully comic biopic of corporate whistleblower Mark Whitacre, who helped the FBI bust price fixing in America’s agribusiness sector, but wound up in federal prison for his own extreme indiscretions.

    “That’s kind of what watching movies is about – we’re delighted to be lied to for two or three hours. So Mark’s story was such obvious movie material.”

    We are sitting at a corner table in the bustling bar of London’s Soho Hotel, the afternoon ahead of the film’s UK premiere at the London Film Festival. Following a month of promoting the film in Venice, Toronto and the U.S., Burns is a touch dazed, unaccustomed to this level of individual attention: “The Informant!” represents his first solo feature credit, following producing and co-writing efforts on “An Inconvenient Truth” and “The Bourne Ultimatum” respectively, and a 2006 writing-directing debut with the HBO TV movie “Pu-239.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Michelle Monaghan

    Michelle MonaghanOf all the actors I’ve spoken to over the years, I do not remember having such a great time as I did with Michelle Monaghan, currently on screens in “Trucker” and generating some awards chatter for her work. The actress is funny, honest, refreshingly frank and grateful for her career, unaffected by her fame, and a genuinely nice gal, still obviously remembering the lessons she learned growing up surrounded by working class values.

    She laughs often and it is a deep, infectious laugh that seems to surge right through the phone line.  What she has achieved in a very short time is special indeed, and despite having no training as an actor, she may be one of the finest American actresses of her generation; she is certainly the best I’ve seen this year.

    Monaghan has been visible on the American film scene since earning strong reviews for her riveting performance in “North Country” in 2005, with Oscar winner Charlize Theron, which she followed with “Mission: Impossible III” a year later, more than holding her own opposite Tom Cruise. Her performance in “Gone Baby Gone” was remarkable, resonating with a great deal of sadness, and she ran around the blockbuster “Eagle Eye” with Shia LaBeouf, managing to find an actual character amid the fluff.

    The girl can act, and she is getting better with each film.  Her turn in “Trucker” is astonishing.

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  • INTERVIEW: Steven Soderbergh

    Steven SoderberghToronto Film Festival

    Steven Soderbergh freely admits how much luck has played into his career, beginning with winning the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1989, the victory that launched his career and his first major work, “sex, lies and videotape.”

    “First of all the film was not supposed to be part of the competition but when another film was removed they bumped mine into that category,” he explains, “and then Francis Ford Coppola, who was supposed to be head of jury, couldn’t do it, so Wim Wenders took over. Without those two sets of circumstances would anything good have come out of Cannes for me? You have to ask yourself those things. Luck was with me, and I am fine with that. It’s knowing what to do with that luck.”

    Soderbergh is a relaxed guy in this posh hotel suite. For some reason Warner Bros. chose the Royal York Hotel for their press days, away from festival village, and a cab (or subway) ride away from the action. I don’t mind the break, and frankly I admire Soderbergh very much, so I was looking forward to meeting him and speaking with him about his film “The Informant!” (opening today) and his career.

    At this stage in his life, as he nears 50, Sodebrergh smiles and says he sees so much comedy in the world around him these days.  “You have to see the humor in things don’t you,” he asks.  “When I read ‘The Informant’ for the first time I saw it as a comedy, which many other people did not. But think about it, there have been films like this done as drama, Michael Mann’s ‘The Insider,’ which I like very much, so I chose not to go in that direction.

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  • INTERVIEW: Clive Owen

    Clive OwenToronto Film Festival

    “I have two lives, mate,” Clive Owen says with clear-eyed certainty. “My work, and when I am done, my home life. There is no question to me which is more important. My wife and children are everything to me.”

    Owen is as intense in person as he is in some of the roles he played on screen the last few years. Best known as a tough guy type in films such as “Sin City” and “Shoot ‘Em Up,” he is also brilliant without the edge, as evident in “Bent” and his Oscar-nominated turn in “Closer.” He sits close to me, his eyes never leave mine, and when I glance down to make a note he is still staring at me. But when he smiles his eyes smile as well. As Scott Hicks says, “Clive loves his life, he loves his family, his girls, his work, and his success…he loves his life.”

    I wondered how much that love for family and life allowed Owen to tap into the mind of the character he portrays so very well in “The Boys are Back,” the new film from Aussie director Hicks, who first made an impact here back in 1996 with “Shine.” Owen has emerged as one of the great British actors in recent years, his scalding performance in “Closer” an extraordinary poiece of acting that seemed to blow everyone else in the film off the screen, no mean feat considering the quality of the acting in the movie. Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman gave career best work in the film, many of their scenes coming opposite the actor in front of me.

    Owen’s road to this place began in television, with his first memorable film performance coming in the powerful drama “Bent,” based on the play by Martin Sherman about Hitler’s massacre of homosexuals during the Holocaust. It was “Gosford Park” that next earned him strong notices, followed by a role in “The Bourne Identity” with Matt Damon.

    After the box office failure of “King Arthur,” Owen was back in theaters with “Closer,” which changed the course of his career. Brilliant work in “Children of Men,” “Inside Man” and, more recently, the under-appreciated “Duplicity,” have made him one of the top stars working in film today, and among the busiest. At one time he was among the leading contenders for the role of James Bond, a role that eventually went to Daniel Craig. He possesses a Bogart tough guy persona, but with a soft side buried within. There is certainly an edge to his work, but there is a heart there as well.

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  • INTERVIEW: Robert Duvall

    Robert DuvallToronto Film Festival

    Sitting down with Robert Duvall is more than a little intimidating. The man does not suffer fools, nor does he have a lot of time for small talk or stupid questions. He likes to talk, but he also likes an informed conversation.  As he nears 80, he is still a force of nature, with a powerful presence and voice that goes up and down depending on his excitement.

    Duvall and I first met in 1997 when “The Apostle” exploded out of Toronto, landing the veteran actor a much-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Actor.  The performance was a volcanic, furious portrait of a man trying to atone for his sins by building a church in the backwoods of Louisiana after killing a man in a fit of rage. For 13 years Duvall shopped the project around Hollywood, being turned down by the major and minor studios until his accountant suggested he finance the film himself.  In a position to do so, he did just that, eventually selling the film at TIFF after a famed bidding war.

    I got to know him when he invited me to spend some time with him on the set of “John Q” while it was shooting here in Toronto, the invitation coming during the 2000 Film Festival when I interviewed him a few times for his soccer picture, “A Shot at Glory,” in which he co-starred with soccer star Ally McCoist.  In the years since, Duvall has kept himself busy with great roles and performances in films such as “Broken Trail,” for which he won the Emmy Award for Best Actor, and “Kicking and Screaming,” a soccer comedy with Will Farrell that seemed like an odd choice for the actor.

    Recognized as one of America’s greatest thespians, Duvall has given an array of brilliant performances over the years, from his breakthrough, shy Boo, in “To Kill a Mockingbird” through to his mafia lawyer Tom Hagen in “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” and perhaps most memorable of all, Kilgore in “Apocalypse Now.” He came into his own in the 1970s, at a time when other major talents such as Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Gene Hackman were also turning in brilliant performances, changing the face of American acting.

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  • INTERVIEW: Jason Reitman

    Jason ReitmanTelluride Film Festival

    Four days ago, Jason Reitman finalized his latest film, “Up in the Air,” by making one final song change. Two days ago he unveiled it to its first-ever first audience, his nerves shot. Today, somewhat more relaxed in the wake of a warm reception to the film, he’s sitting outside at a cafe on a sunny day, the famous gondolas of Telluride swinging around and up the hillside to Mountain Village behind him as he thinks back on the experience.

    “It felt really good,” he says. “I’ve never had that short a period of time between finishing a film and it showing for the first time. I’m used to having a few weeks to get nervous, but I was really making creative choices up until the last second. It was almost surreal, it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m watching it with an audience.’ And there’s this moment when you give up the movie. It stops being yours and starts being everyone else’s. It’s unusual. People laugh at a certain point or they’ll find something moving that you didn’t expect. They start telling you what the movie was. I didn’t expect that emotional experience for myself. A lot came together Saturday.”

    Reitman began conceiving the story of “Up in the Air” — which strays considerably from the film’s source material, a 2002 Walter Kirn novel — six years ago. (Sheldon Turner, who shares screen credit on the adaptation, penned a draft early on, but Reitman came from his own place on things.)  He began turning over its themes in his head, considering them in their barest form.. “They started coalescing further a few years ago,” he says, “and then, really in the year leading up to the movie, right after ‘Juno,’ it suddenly felt like, you know, this was a question I really needed to ask. I go through the same questions that the main character does.”

    In the film, George Clooney stars as career transition specialist Ryan Bingham, a hired gun terminator. It’s an element of the film that skims the zeitgeist but its the personal journey of the character that Reitman wanted to dig at, notions of one’s responsibility to engage with the world around you, with one’s family, and the idea that no man is — or at least no man should be — an island unto himself.

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  • INTERVIEW: Mark Boal

    Mark BoalFor a man more accustomed to the dirt-under-the-fingernails highs of hard journalism, the red carpets, photo calls and cosseted hotel suites of film promotion clearly represent a very different kind of strain for Mark Boal, the journalist-turned-screenwriter who on Monday won the prestigious Gucci Group Award at the Venice Film Festival.

    Back in August, on the hottest afternoon of the year, the tall, lank-haired writer of Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” lopes into the lobby of London’s cooler-than-thou Sanderson Hotel, dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, and politely asks if I’ll join him over a beer.

    “I’ve been on coffee all day, and it’s not working,” he grins, his face betraying missed hours of sleep, but still more boyish than its 36 years. “Maybe this’ll make a difference.”

    Boal registers a brief flicker of bewilderment upon learning that the only beer on the Sanderson’s ultra-precious bar menu is Sri Lankan, and rather exotically priced at that, but we order two anyway. “It’s still beer, right?” he confirms with the waiter.

    It’s regular-guy moments like this that shed a little light onto Boal’s humanistic gifts as a reporter and, now, as a screenwriter: modest, relatable and defiantly no-bullshit, it’s easy to imagine a group of soldiers welcoming him into the fold, as happened in 2004, when Boal was an embedded in (or, to use his term, “hung out with”) an elite bomb disposal unit for several weeks, laying the groundwork for the screenplay he then had no plans to write.

    “I was really keen to do a story on the bomb squad,” he explains. “It was clear that IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) would be the army’s central logistical element by 2004, but still, nothing was being written on it. Iraq was a bit of a news black hole after the invasion … people simply thought it too dangerous.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Paul Schneider

    Paul SchneiderTelluride Film Festival

    Paul Schneider has had a headache since he was nine years old.  Or at least, he says, that’s what it feels like.  Since the rush of a film festival isn’t the best environment for migraines, a corner booth in an unassuming cafe is a nice distraction for the actor.

    Schneider left the North Carolina Piedmont with a degree in film editing and a role in his friend David Gordon Green’s feature debut “George Washington” in the spring of 1999.  He moved to Los Angeles for what he calls “six weird months” before retreating to home base and a year living in Raleigh, and that’s when things started happening.  Green’s film hit the festival circuit, later became one of the most celebrated debuts of 2000 (landing on Roger Ebert’s top 10 list) and put Schneider in a position to make some moves.  He picked up an agent and things started to come together.

    “I thought it was sort of a fancy situation,” he says, sipping coffee, looking off in the distance, thoughtfully choosing his words.  “I was farther ahead in this game than I was in the editing game.  I was still around what I liked.  I was still around this thing and I thought I’d just give it a whirl.  Even a moderate success in acting can afford you a lot of time and a lot of money to do a lot of other stuff.  But it kind of just kept on happening.”

    From “George Washington” Schneider starred opposite Zooey Deschanel in Green’s equally respected “All the Real Girls” (which Schneider co-wrote while he and Green were in film school).  He landed roles in Cameron Crowe’s “Elizabethtown,” Tom Bezucha’s “The Family Stone” and Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” but despite the indication that directors were banging down his door, Schneider makes it clear that he didn’t have much autonomy, nor does he today.

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘District 9’ star Sharlto Copley

    Sharlto CopleyWhen actor Sharlto Copley first pops up on screen in Neill Blomkamp’s “District 9,” it isn’t a grand movie moment in the style of John Wayne’s arrival (albeit out of focus) in John Ford’s “Stagecoach” by any means.  In fact, viewers might instinctively expect Copley’s character, Wikus Van De Merwe, to be a supporting player, what with his unassuming demeanor and character actor appearance.

    By the end of the film, however, audiences will have witnessed one of the most controlled, authentic portrayals of the year.  And this humble viewer’s prediction is that, down the line, the upcoming weekend’s wide release will ultimately be seen as the coming out party for an exciting new acting talent.

    At the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills recently, Copley winds down at the end of a lengthy press day for the film.  Fielding wall-to-wall questions from broadcast and print media can leave a person numb to the talking points, but as he hungrily chomps down on an apple, he still maintains focus on what it is about the project that interested him from the outset.

    “I guess I was always interested in films that either had a comedic edge or a depth to them, an intelligent aspect,” he says, staring off toward the downtown Los Angeles skyline as he searches for the words.  “As much as it could be exciting or whatever, that was always important to me.  And I think what Neill’s done with this film is combine those things really well.  You’ve got satire, you’ve got drama, so it’s a pretty unique situation.”

    Indeed, “District 9” is seen in some quarters as indicative of a human interest science-fiction story in a genre that has increasingly lost its grounded footing.  It makes for a nice sister film to Duncan Jones’s “Moon” in that way, sci-fi that interests itself with tangible emotional beats more so than the high concept science of it all.

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  • INTERVIEW: 20 questions with Denis Leary

    Denis LearyWe rarely cover television with any real focus around these parts, but as you’ve probably gathered from my sporadic posts on the matter, I’m really digging the new season of “Rescue Me.”  So it was a little difficult to pass up an opportunity to sit down with the film’s star and co-creator Denis Leary recently.

    With the Emmy nominations set to be unveiled next week (7/9), it seemed the perfect time to get together.  Leary was nominated for his performance as FDNY firefighter Tommy Gavin two years in a row in 2006 and 2007, but was unfortunately ignored last year.  Perhaps this new, electrifying season will put him back in the awards saddle as he seeks his first win in the category of Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.

    Leary, of course, got his first big break on MTV, where his chain-smoking, ranting misanthrope appealed to the pent-up angst of the network’s target audience.  From stand-up to film roles and finally a break-out FX series, now in its fifth season, Leary has continued to stretch himself both as a writer and an actor.  His most recent big screen appearance hit screens yesterday in the form of “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.”  Leary voices the sabertooth tiger Diego in the successful franchise.

    On a drizzly Santa Monica afternoon last month we met for lunch and discussed his versatile career, from his early years at Emerson College in Boston to his recently released best-selling comedy book, the edgeless MTV of today to his distant cousin Conan O’Brien’s assuming the “Tonight Show” throne on NBC late night.  Oh yeah, and plenty of football talk between fellow devotees, for all the gridiron fanatics out there.  There’s a little something for everybody…

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘The Stoning of Soraya M.’ director Cyrus Nowrasteh

    Cyrus Nowrasteh on the set of The Stoning of Soraya M.Those seeking a cinematic escape from this week’s barrage of “Transformers” silliness couldn’t find a much more sober alternative than Cyrus Nowrasteh’s “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” an adaptation of the non-fiction bestseller by French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam.

    A spare, moving study of gender persecution in 1980s Iran, as frank and unpretentious as its title, Nowrasteh’s fact-based drama may pivot on the eponymous ritual killing, but builds its larger narrative on more cathartic themes of storytelling and silence-breaking. As such, while it may sound like a grim night at the movies, it’s an oddly hopeful film – one whose accessibility was proved with the runner-up Audience Award at last year’s Toronto fest.

    Shohreh Aghdashloo (whom you’ll remember from her deservingly Oscar-nominated work in 2003’s “House of Sand and Fog”) plays Zahra, a senior resident of a remote desert village seeking retribution against the town’s male elders for their collective murder of her niece, the Soraya of the title.

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