‘Very cruel and sad’: Iranian leader Asghar Farhadi speaks out against government violence and war | Cannes Film Festival

Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has described the deaths of civilians in Iran as “brutal and very sad” at a press conference in Iran. Cannes Film Festival.

Farhadi, whose new play Paris Similar Issues which started on the Croisette on Thursday night, he was asked about the unrest in France, the war involving Iran, the US and Israel, and the suppression of protesters in his country.

The director, who is sitting outside Iran since 2023, he said he was in Tehran last week and still has the effects of “two terrible events”.

“One was the death of several innocent people, children, civilians who died in the war,” he said. Before this, we had the death of several protestors, people who went to the streets to protest, and they were also innocent. These two events are very painful and will never be forgotten.

Farhadi stressed that it is possible to criticize the violence in the government and the deaths caused by the war without controversy. “Expressing anger when innocent people are killed in bombings does not mean that one agrees with the killing and killing of opponents,” he said.

Similarly, feeling sorry for the people who were shot in the protests does not mean that you cannot feel sorry for the people who died in the bombings.

He also said: “Killing someone is a crime.” There is no way I can accept the fact that someone should be killed, whether it is in war, whether it is being killed, whether it is killing protesters.

Parallel Tales, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski’s television series Dekalog, starred French celebrities including Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve and Vincent Cassel.

Farhadi has already won the Grand Prix at Cannes for Hero in 2021, where his films Separation (2011) and The seller (2016) both won the Oscar for Best Picture. They boycotted the 2017 Academy Awards in protest of Donald Trump’s ban targeting several Muslim countries, including Iran.

The director also vowed not to make films in Iran while censorship laws are still in place. Earlier this year, he urged his fellow filmmakers to speak out against the war, calling attacks on civilians a “war crime”.

Iranian films are still popular at Cannes. Last year, the independent filmmaker Jafar Panahi won the Palme d’Or It was just an accidentbefore being handed over to an Iranian prison to serve a prison term and travel ban for “propaganda”. Meanwhile, Mohammad Rasoulof received a special award The Seed of the Holy Fig in Cannes in 2024, and now lives in Germany.