By: Louisa Moore / www.ScreenZealots.com

The tenacity of a mother’s love provides the strong foundation for writer / director Noora Niasari‘s “Shayda,” a harrowing portrait of an Iranian woman who is doing her best to make the most of a terrible situation. This intimate story is one of female empowerment and endurance in a cultural system that often treats females as second class citizens.

Shayda (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) is a young mother who, with her 6-year-old daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia) has fled her horribly abusive husband Hossein (Osamah Sami) and moved into a women’s shelter in... read the rest.