Separation anxiety: meet Iranian director Asghar Farhadi
Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's lauded divorce drama thrust him into the limelight. But there are more important things in life than fame, he tells James Mottram
ONCE IN A WHILE A filmmaker delivers a work that touches a global nerve. So it was for Iranian director-scriptwriter Asghar Farhadi with 2011's (aka ). The reaction to the fifth film of the 41-year-old's relatively short career was nothing short of sensational. Even now, he can't quite believe it. "The story of was a slope that went up and up and up," he says. "I didn't expect it. Every time something happened, I thought 'This is the end of it'. And then it went up further - and I'm sure it's not finished yet."
The Golden Bear and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin International Film Festival heralded 12 months of non-stop accolades. The film won more than 60 awards, including a Golden Globe, a French César and an Academy Award for best foreign language film, making Farhadi the first Iranian to win an Oscar.
Even more unusually, the film was nominated for best original screenplay - a category, like most at the Academy Awards, usually reserved for English-language movies. (It was beaten by Woody Allen's .)
"I was happy for the film, but I didn't take anything personally. I didn't think something spectacular was happening to me," says Farhadi. "It was just the story of the film. I let it go, and I didn't let it contaminate too much of the work that I was doing." Given that Time magazine included him on its list of 100 Most Influential People for 2012, he's being remarkably modest.
Farhadi says the awards and acclaim were secondary as arrived "at a very crucial moment between American and Iranian people". At the time, there were signs that the US and Iran were escalating covert activities against each other. "The threat of war was getting more and more serious," says Farhadi. "I think that this was a relief for everyone. What took place around lowered the intensity of the debate about potential war."
Farhadi has never viewed himself as a polemical filmmaker. "I don't want to become a political spokesman," he says. "That's not what I do." He prefers his battles to be fought on the domestic front. dealt, in almost microscopic detail, with a couple's divorce proceedings as they go through the Iranian courts. (2006) was an intimate portrait of three marriages, and (2009) also dealt with a trio of couples, former classmates who take a short vacation together.
