Iranian director Asghar Farhadi accepts Oscar at Cannes

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has accepted Oscar’s statuette for Best Foreign Language Film 2016 for his ‘The Salesman’ in Cannes.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences representative Meredith Shea traveled to the 70th Cannes Film Festival to present Farhadi and producer Alexandre Mallet-Guy with the accolade for their work on the 2016 film.

Farhadi could not attend the Oscars in February due to President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order barring citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US.

The Best Foreign Language Film Oscar is typically bestowed to the country that submits the project for awards consideration while the film’s director usually takes the honor during the telecast but the Iranian director did not collect his prize on the evening at the Dolby Theatre.

Anousheh Ansari, who is credited as the first woman space tourist, and Firouz Naderi, who previously worked at NASA as a director of solar system exploration, received the award in the 89th Oscar ceremony on behalf of Farhadi.

Farhadi’s statement, read by Ansari, said “I’m sorry I’m not with you tonight. My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans immigrants from entrance into the U.S. Dividing the world into the ‘us’ and ‘our enemies’ creates fear.”

The Academy, led by president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, issued a statement on the Trump-backed policy and said “As supporters of filmmakers—and the human rights of all people—around the globe, we find it extremely troubling that Asghar Farhadi, the director of the Oscar-winning film from Iran ‘A Separation’, along with the cast and crew of this year’s Oscar-nominated film ‘The Salesman’, could be barred from entering the country because of their religion or country of origin.”

A few years before ‘The Salesman’, Farhadi had been nominated for writing the screenplay for the 2011 film ‘A Separation’, which also won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

MG/MMF