And Along Came a Spider

Aided by investigative journalist Roya Karimi, director Maziar Bahari interviews the 39-year-old serial killer Saeed Hanaei, who murdered 16 prostitutes in the Iranian city of Mashad. Disturbingly self-assured, Hanaei justifies his deeds by citing the Koran. He does not see his victims as human beings, so he therefore does not want to be labelled a "killer," rather an "anti-street women activist." Bahari films Hanaei's imperturbable, sometimes smiling face in extreme close-up. He also interviews other people involved in the case, thus providing an extensive view of the situation in Iran that drove Hanaei to commit his crimes. Hanaei gets moral support from his mother, his brother, his wife and his son, who calmly uses a pillow to demonstrate to us how his father smothered the women. Bahari also speaks with the trial judge, who rejects Hanaei's use of Islam as an excuse, with one of the victim's fathers, with a prostitute whose identity is concealed and who says she would rather be dead, and with the two young daughters of one of the victims - if given the chance, they would like to kill Hanaei themselves. To accentuate the story, we are periodically confronted with photos of the suffocated victims in death.