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After 2017 boycott, Iranian director Farhadi ready for awards season
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Award-winning director: Filmmaker Asghar Farhadi at a special reception for his new film A Hero at Anassa Taverna on Dec. 8, 2021, in New York City, the United States. (Getty Images via AFP/GETTY IMAGES North America/Monica Schipper)
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ranian Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi is prepared to enjoy awards season this time around if his shortlisted film A Hero makes it to the final five when the Oscar nominations are announced next week.
In 2017, Farhadi won the Oscar for best foreign-language film for The Salesman -- but boycotted the ceremony because of then-United States President Donald Trump’s ban on travel to the United States from seven majority Muslim nations including Iran.
Promoting his new movie from a hotel room in West Hollywood, Farhadi says that, if he is nominated again, these Oscars will be a very different experience.
"It makes me very happy that as an Iranian I’m going through this path," he said.
"I know that for part of the Iranian youth, this can create hope [...] and this creates this satisfaction feeling inside me. It gives those young people some kind of hope so they can continue this path and bring some awards and prizes to Iran."
A Hero, a cowinner of the Grand Prix distinction at the Cannes Film Festival, follows Rahim, a prisoner who makes a plan with his fiancée to sell a bag of gold coins that she has found to pay off his debts so he can be released from jail.
He has a sudden change of heart and manages to track down the coins' owner. But being hailed as a hero raises unexpected complications for the young man that draw in those around him.
