Spanish festival honors Iranian director Asghar Farhadi

The 20th edition of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival (LPA) in Spain has honored celebrated Iranian director Asghar Farhadi.

The two-time Oscar winner Farhadi received an honorary award as a significant figure in the history of the festival at the opening ceremony of the Spanish event on Friday.

The filmmaker won the Golden Lady Harimaguada Award, the top prize of the LPA, in 2007 for his movie ‘Fireworks Wednesday’. The movie is about a woman who doubts her husband’s loyalty.

The 2021 edition of the Spanish festival has also planned to pay tribute to the Iranian director by screening a retrospective of his films, including ‘Fireworks Wednesday’, ‘About Elly’, ‘A Separation’ and ‘The Salesman’.

This year’s edition of the LPA has been slated for April 9-18 in the island of Gran Canaria in Canary Islands.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper Canarias7 before receiving the award, Farhadi said that there is no single language spoken in the whole world, however, the language of feelings including violence, love, and hatred is shared among all people.

“There are two types of filmmakers. Some make their movies from their heart and the unconscious. Others make them from logic and reason. The latter has the ability to change things. I make them from the heart and the unconscious, so I cannot control everything,” he also noted.

“I cannot separate a local work from the universal. A local work, if done well, can be understood all over the world. There should be no border between the local and the global works,” Farhadi added.

Referring to his 2018 thriller ‘Everybody Knows’, starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, he mentioned that he is eager to make a new movie in Spain again but he hasn’t made up his mind yet.

Farhadi’s ‘The Salesman’ and ‘A Separation’, both in Persian language, won him Oscars for best foreign-language film. ‘A Separation’ was also nominated for best screenplay at the Oscars.

The movies grossed $23 million worldwide and more than $7 million in the US.

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