Asghar Farhadi Fully Cleared of ‘A Hero’ Plagiarism Allegations by Iranian Court
variety.comNick Vivarelli International Correspondent Two-time Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi has been fully cleared by an Iranian court of allegations of plagiarism pertaining to his film “A Hero” that launched from the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.
Farhadi’s former student Azadeh Masihzadeh had accused the filmmaker of stealing the idea for “A Hero” from a documentary she made during a filmmaking workshop held by Farhadi in 2014 in Tehran.
Her allegations of plagiarism led an Iranian court to open preliminary trial proceedings in March 2022. The court has now issued a verdict according to which several Tehran University copyright law experts and other experts have rejected the accusations as baseless, clearing Farhadi of all blame and putting an end to Masihzadeh’s legal action, according to a statement issued by Farhadi’s French producer Alexandre-Mallet Guy corroborated by Iranian reports. “A Hero” is about an earnest-looking man named Rahim who, while on furlough after being imprisoned for debt, returns a lost handbag full of gold coins — an act that appears to make him a good samaritan.
However, the story ends up being more complicated. The film won the Grand Prize in Cannes in 2021 and was Iran’s submission for the international feature film category at the Academy Awards that year.
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