Do we like Asghar Farhadi?
Our score: 8 out of 10. He has publicly backed Iranian women, protesters and migrants, and one plagiarism fight is his only real stain, which a court cleared in 2024.
Farhadi is the Iranian director behind A Separation and The Salesman, both Oscar winners, and he is famous for tight domestic dramas where everyone has a point. Since 2022 he has been less shy about speaking out, which in his position is not nothing.
The big scandal was over A Hero. A former student, Azadeh Masihzadeh, accused him of lifting the idea from a documentary she made in his 2014 workshop. Early April 2022 headlines said he was guilty, but that was only a preliminary step. In March 2024 an Iranian court cleared him, after University of Tehran IP professors testified that retelling public events doesn't give anyone ownership. She could still lodge an objection, and Farhadi's line was that the film is simply 'one interpretation of the event'.
On the harm check he comes out clean. In 2017 he skipped the Oscars over Trump's travel ban, with a statement calling it an “inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S.” In 2022, after Mahsa Amini's death in custody, he urged artists to back protesters, praising the women leading them and calling it “a human responsibility”. We found no harmful words and no dodgy company on the record.
The recent bit is Cannes, May 2026. Asked about the war and the crackdown on protesters at home, he condemned both the killing of civilians in US and Israeli attacks and the Islamic Republic's “massacring” of protesters, saying he can't accept anyone's life being taken. Where you land on the war is your call, but he applied the same standard to every side. His film Parallel Tales, meanwhile, was panned, with Screen calling it convoluted and Variety calling it muddled.
The good stuff is mostly the work and the stand-taking. In August 2026 the Sarajevo Film Festival gave him its Honorary Heart for his contribution to cinema, and he used the moment to talk up the festival crowds. Honestly, that's about the whole of the awards-and-kindness list we could verify; no charity record turned up.
So: a filmmaker who has paid a price for speaking up, with one accusation that a court threw out. A flop at Cannes is a creative problem, not a moral one.