Asghar Farhadi Talks For First Time About ‘A Hero’ Plagiarism Claims: “I’m Sorry It Has Created So Much Ill Feeling” — Cannes Jury Press Conference
deadline.comIf the jury press conference for the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is anything to go by, we’re in for a pretty punchy ride on the Croisette the next few weeks.Iranian director Asghar Fahradi spoke for the first time of a plagiarism suit that was filed against him from his former film student Azadeh Masihzadeh, who accused him of stealing the idea of last year’s Cannes Grand Prix winner A Hero.
Masihzadeh claims the two-time Oscar-winning director took the idea directly from her 2018 documentary All Winners, All Losers.The director, who was initially found guilty, is currently waiting to hear if the evidence against him will be challenged or re-examined and insists that false information is being spread by different news outlets.“I have never spoken directly about this matter,” Fahradi said at the press conference on Tuesday. “This documentary was something I saw at a workshop and talked about with a student but much later, I created the film A Hero and it cannot be viewed as a way of plagiarising.
In A Hero, what is in the film is something quite different to what is in the documentary. We have to see why certain journalists have spread this incorrect information.”The director added, “What we do is make fiction films and what I did in my film A Hero is not related to the work done in the workshop I’ve just referred to.
It was based on a current event so this documentary and this film are based on an event that happened two years prior to the workshop.
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