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Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is a man of many accolades, including two Oscars and a Golden Bear, but the filmmaker has also managed one thing very few others have: achieving great box-office success both domestically
and internationally. “A Separation,” Iran’s first-ever Oscar-winning film, earned $25 million worldwide, while “The Salesman” earned $4.3 million in Iran, putting the director among the most commercially successful in his home country.
Farhadi, who is at the Sarajevo Film Festival as the recipient of an honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award as well as the subject of a career retrospective, was asked about how he has managed to pull off such a feat. His answer spoke to the current political climate: “We see [Yasujirō] Ozu films from Japan, and we feel all emotions, but we don’t have any information about their culture. [Akira] Kurosawa, Ozu… We can understand that, because all these films are based on humanity. We forgot [about it] today because the media highlights that we are all different, and all news [is] about differences.”
“They don’t say [how] moms everywhere have the same emotions towards their kid, but the way they express it is different,” he went on. “The taste of that love is the same. Love, the base for drama, is the same everywhere. People are very close to each other in the world, but they divide it, the media. When something happens, there’s this push by some politicians to [highlight] the differences.”
The director illustrated his point with a stark image: “A bomb in Afghanistan explodes and kills 10 kids; the first thing that comes to our mind is: their kids are a little different. This is part of their lives.” “Why do you think that a mother in Afghanistan, that her love for her kids is different than our mom?”
“People who hate each other, if they sit in the same room, if they knew each other… Everything would be ok,” he added. “We feel we are different, we don’t know each other, so everything goes back to this.”
“If you make a local film based on humanity, based on the real life of people, everyone understands it,” emphasized the director. “If you’re an honest filmmaker, the more local, the more universal.”
Farhadi also made an explicit point of telling budding filmmakers in the room that you cannot chase success, and that success can be a “dangerous” thing. Speaking about his life following two Oscars and major international projection, the director said he misses the days when he could just be at a festival, talking to people one-to-one, walking the streets, and having a more mundane, low-profile experience of a place.
“Success doesn’t mean luck,” he said. “Success is very dangerous. It makes a distance between you and people. I would love to be closer to people. When you get this success, and they highlight it in the media, it’s very dangerous because it doesn’t give you the opportunity to make the wrong decision. And we cannot calculate everything.”
“The other thing that is important is: don’t make films for success,” he noted. “Some filmmakers are trying to be sure about the result before they start making films, because they enjoy the success after the film. They don’t enjoy the process of filmmaking. Some filmmakers love filmmaking. Some filmmakers love to be a filmmaker. There’s a difference.”
When making films in his home country, Farhadi is careful to construct characters based on nuanced ideas of language and culture, using the example of how different oaths (that is, “I swear by …”) are used by different characters. “Nowadays, I see a lot of films when all the characters are the same. Everyone talks like each other, but in cinema, we can make different vocabularies,” he said.
The director also praised British director Mike Leigh. The “Naked” helmer is also a fan of Farhadi’s, and has helped organize screenings of his work in London. “I admire Mike Leigh as one of the biggest filmmakers in the world,” said the Iranian.
“The process he does is very different, and I love that,” he continued. “He said he has a crew of friends who come together; they start talking about ideas, they do some improvising, and during this process he starts writing this script. And the interesting thing is that his scripts are so structured. The process is very unique, very special, and Mike can do it. Respect to him.”
Prodded as to how he feels about Leigh saying the upcoming “Tender Loving Care” will be his last film, Farhadi said: “I hope he changes his decision.”
Longevity is also on the mind of the 54-year-old director, who noted he wishes to continue making films until his dying breath. “I hope I can continue doing this job and making more and more films.” The prognosis looks good, with Farhadi having premiered “Parallel Tales” in Cannes earlier this year and having already started writing his next film, which will be shot in his native Farsi.
