Unprecedented Brilliance of Iranian Cinema at Cannes; Best Actor and Best Screenplay Awards

Iranian cinema achieved unprecedented brilliance by winning the Best Actor and Best Screenplay awards at the Cannes Film Festival.

Shahab Hosseini won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, and Asghar Farhadi, director of the film “The Salesman,” received the Best Screenplay award.

Shahab Hosseini later dedicated the Best Actor award to the people of Iran:

“This award comes from my people in a way, so I return it to them. I present this award from the depths of my heart and with love to the people of my homeland.”

Mr. Farhadi also participated in the main competition section at Cannes in 2013 with the film “The Past,” for which Bérénice Bejo won the Best Actress award for her performance in it.

He had also won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film for the film “A Separation” in 2012.

In the film “The Salesman,” Asghar Farhadi’s latest work, which is a joint production of Iran and France, Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti are the main actors.

It is said that the film “The Salesman” was submitted to the Cannes Film Festival late, but the festival authorities accepted the film.

The film deals with the relationship of a couple named Raena and Emad (played by Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti) who are performing in a production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.”

On the eve of the premiere of the production, structural weakness in the residential building where they live becomes problematic, and they are forced to evacuate it and temporarily move to another building that their co-actor in the play, Babak (played by Babak Karimi), owns.

In the new house, an incident occurs for Raena that inadvertently entangles the couple’s relationship in tension and turmoil.

Lourta Gandolfi, a film researcher at Cambridge University, told BBC Persian: “The film has special subtleties in comparing the world of theatre with the real world of the couple in the story (when you watch the film, for example, pay attention to the empty chairs on stage and their equivalent in the couple’s apartment). Overall, I think it’s a strong film, but in some places, like the middle section, it loses its focus. Nevertheless, the audience in the screening room welcomed it warmly.”

This year’s Palme d’Or also went to Ken Loach, a British director, for the film “I, Daniel Blake.”

This is the director’s second Palme d’Or. He had previously won the same award in 2006 for the film “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.”

This film is an attack on the “dangerous project of economic austerity measures” framed through the life of a middle-aged man and the British social security system.

The film “American Honey” by British director Andrea Arnold also won the Jury Prize of the festival.