Opportunity to make history of Iranian cinema at the Oscars

Theater News Base: In the latest prediction about the 2022 Oscars, published by Hollywood Awards columnist Scott Feinberg, “The Hero”, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, is among the top four. The sum of the final nominees for the two categories of best film and director will be selected. This will be the first time that Iranian cinema will be nominated for an Oscar in these two important and main categories of the Oscars.

“Hero” is the fourth highest-grossing film after “King Richard”, “Belfast” and “Dog Power”, followed by “C’mon, C’mon”, “Koda”, “Tel Sand”. “The stronger you get, the harder you fall”, “Parallel Mother” and “Spencer”. In the category of best director, Farhadi was at the top of the chances of winning the award, followed by “Kenneth Branagh” (Belfast), “Jane Campion” (Dog Power), “Dennis Willow” (Tel Sand) and “Rinaldo Marcus Green” ( King Richard).

The film is in second place in the Best Original Screenplay category after “Belfast” and “King Richard”, “C’mon, Cmon” and “Parallel Mothers” are Farhadi’s other main competitors in this category.

According to previous predictions, “Hero” is also in the category of the best international film (non-English language film) in the category of main prize winners and “Coupe No. 6” (Finland), “Titan” (France), “Worst Man in the World” ( Norway) and “Hand of God” (Italy) are the main competitors in this film. However, the film “Hero” has not yet been officially introduced as the representative of Iranian cinema in the category of the best international film.

Iranian cinema has already won foreign Oscars with two films, “Separation” and “Seller”, and Farhadi was among the finalists for “Separation” in the category of best original screenplay. Prior to that, Majidi nominated Ibn Shakha for the Oscars for the first time in 1998 with his film “Children of the Sky”.

If “Champion” is nominated for Best Picture or Best Director, this will be the first appearance of Iranian cinema among the nominees for these two categories of Oscars, which has rarely seen the presence of Asian filmmakers.

Farhadi’s latest film was unveiled at its first world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this year and eventually won the Grand Jury Prize.

“Hero” is scheduled to be released in US cinemas from January 7, 2022 (January 17) and from January 21 by Amazon Prime online show system. Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Fereshteh Sadr Arfaei and Sarina Farhadi went in front of the camera with a group of local actors in Shiraz.