Asghar Farhadi is one of Iran’s most esteemed filmmakers, and film festivals treasure his work, often selecting it for the competition sections. The Cannes Film Festival, for instance, has included among its lineup The Past, The Client, Everybody Knows, A Hero, and Parallel Tales, which will arrive in our cinemas on November 5, distributed by Lucky Red.
If we are talking about this director today, it is because, at the Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, he offered an interesting reflection on American cinema and the idea of the white American man as the savior of the world, or rather of that part of the world afflicted by wars. Farhadi, it should be recalled, published an appeal on social media directed to directors and artists worldwide to protest against the bombings ongoing against his country, for which Israel and the United States are responsible. The filmmaker also renounced the idea of shooting a film in Iraq, and indeed Parallel Tales is shot and set in Paris, and it is no coincidence that it speaks of the power of imagination and writing, because telling stories is the best way to forge connections between human beings and, at times, a necessary escape from reality. In this sense, cinema is certainly the most immersive art form. What emerged from an encounter with the filmmaker is that, in his view, America should not presume to narrate the events and culture of other places.
The director’s remarks, which earned him the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for A Separation and later the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, began with Argo, Ben Affleck’s film that won the golden statuette in 2013 and which centers on the post-revolution Tehran of 1979, on the attempt by Canada and the United States to rescue six American citizens who had taken shelter in the Iranian capital’s Canadian embassy during the hostage crisis. Farhadi said first that, when he watched the film, it struck him as a “Hollywood thing,” in other words an American show: “The problem with these Hollywood films and with some residents of the United States is that they look at the world from above. One day we should ask them: ‘Why do you think you are above and we below? I don’t understand where this sense of superiority comes from’.” He then added that, despite America proclaiming itself a democracy, it is not at all so:
You do not have democracy; it’s a lie.
Asghar Farhadi then recalled a period spent in the United States while researching for a film, during which he visited the inmates of a prison in San Francisco:
In prison I met several African Americans and people from other countries. That is the real America, and yet the rest of the world does not see that part of the United States. It bothers me that they feel superior and think that others should be like them. Even if they do so with good intentions and kindness, they wish that one day we would become like them. And yet I do not want that.
Returning to Argo, the filmmaker believes it lacks depth:
They make these films just for money: it’s an industry, and in these films there is always an American white person saving the others. And so I wonder: why does an American have to go to Cuba or Iran to save people? People know they can save themselves. Who asked you to come save us?
Asghar Farhadi also hinted at his new film, which will be spoken in Farsi, saying that it will not be strictly political, although the context in which the characters operate will end up influencing their lives.
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