Double Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi on the perils of Academy Awards and filming outside Iran
- Everybody Knows director talks about the paradox of filming without censorship: despite shooting in Spain he wanted film to be about issues Iranians relate to
- He also worries about losing his way as a director after his two best foreign language Oscar wins, for The Salesman and A Separation
When he won his second Academy Award, for The Salesman, Asghar Farhadi was far from Los Angeles. It was February 27, 2017 and he was watching the ceremony with family and friends in his living room in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Despite having received special dispensation, Farhadi chose not to travel to the Oscars in protest at US President Donald Trump’s temporary ban on entry to the United States by people from Iran and six other Muslim nations. For someone who seldom lets politics cloud his films’ focus on the nuances of the human condition, it was a striking gesture of support for the politically oppressed.
Yet he doesn’t rule out filming a first English-language feature in the US or the United Kingdom some day.
“Perhaps I will make a film in English. I just don’t know when,” he says in Farsi through an interpreter on a visit to Hong Kong. “And I don’t think the political relationship between Iran and the US or the UK would have an impact on that decision – I don’t really think about all that.
“Once a really good story pops into my head and I decide to make a film about it, I would do it. I wouldn’t think about the side issues.”
Indeed, he wasn’t put off by the challenges of filming Everybody Knows, his first Spanish-language film, in Spain.
