Oscar-winning Iranian director Farhadi calls crackdown, war deaths ‘deeply painful’

Asghar Farhadi, director of the first Iranian film to win the Oscar for best foreign language movie, describes as deeply painful the deaths of thousands of people in a January crackdown on protesters and the ongoing war affecting Iran.

“I was actually in Tehran last week, and I am still carrying the impact of these events with me,” the two-time Oscar-winning director told journalists at the Cannes Film Festival, where his film “Parallel Tales” premiered the night before.

“Both are deeply painful, and neither will ever be forgotten.”

In January, anti-government protests across Iran were quashed in the biggest crackdown in the Islamic Republic’s history. At the end of February, US and Israeli airstrikes launched a war against Iran that has drawn in the broader Middle East.

Farhadi, who has been based largely outside Iran since 2023, added that it was painful to read news about innocent people being killed every day.

Farhadi’s “A Separation” became the first Iranian movie to win the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2012.

He won the same Oscar five years later with “The Salesman,” though he boycotted the ceremony in protest against the travel ban affecting several Muslim-majority countries during US President Donald Trump’s first presidential term.

“Parallel Tales,” a drama set in Paris featuring French-language stars Isabelle Huppert and Vincent Cassel, is in competition for the festival’s top prize against 21 other films.