Friday, March 29, 2024

“You can make a film about same event without one being a copy of other”: Asghar Farhadi on plagiarism allegations

Speaking about the matter for the first time in public, award winning director Asghar Farhadi denied that he plagiarised his 2021 film “A Hero.”

“I have never spoken directly about this matter. A lot of the information that you have just given was published in the newspaper. The information was incorrect and was corrected subsequently. So I think we need to rectify the situation in light of the correct information,” said Iranian Oscar-winning director on Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival.

An Iranian court is hearing a case involving a former student, Azadeh Masihzadeh, who has accused Asghar Farhadi of copying the idea for his movie “A Hero” from a documentary that she showed him in a 2014 workshop in Tehran.

The Iranian court is expected to deliver a final verdict.

Farhadi said: “This documentary was something I saw at a workshop. I talked about it with the student. But much later on, I created the film ‘A Hero.’ And it cannot be viewed as a way of plagiarising. In fact, in ‘A Hero,’ what is in the film is something quite different.”

He went on to say: “We have to see why certain journalists have spread this incorrect information. What we do is to make fiction films and what I did in my film ‘A Hero’ is not related to the work done in the workshop I just referred to. It was based on a current event. This documentary and my film ‘A Hero’ are simply based on an event that happened two years prior to the workshop. When an event takes place and is discovered by the press, then it becomes public knowledge and you can do what you like — you can write a story or make a film about the event without one being a copy of the other.”

“A Hero” tells the story of a man who finds and returns a bag filled with gold coins while he’s been temporarily released from prison.

The movie won the Grand Prize in Cannes last year.

The movie was released by Amazon Studios in the United States.

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