Oscar-Winning Iranian Director To Set New Film İn Europe

Iran's award-winning director Asghar Farhadi who brought his country its first Oscar prize in 2012 has used the Istanbul Film Festival to reveal that his next work will be set in Europe.



Speaking to the Anadolu Agency, the 41-year-old director, who is in Turkey as international jury president of the 33rd Istanbul Film Festival, said the exact setting of his next movie is a secret, although his last work, 'The Past', was set in France.



'The Past', which was shot in French despite Farhadi not speaking the language, brought leading actress Berenice Bejo the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival in 2013.



Farhadi, who said that "Turkish culture is very close to our culture," has now claimed that Istanbul could be a future filming location.



Regarded as a master filmmaker and screenwriter by many, Farhadi said Iranian cinema was important to change American "misconceptions" about contemporary Iranian life.



"The media give people the wrong image but through these kind of films they can find real people, real Iranians," he adds, claiming that by watching these works more people would "understand that Iranians are very similar to themselves."



Known for his open-ended and dilemmatic movies, Fahradi says there is not a 'good and bad' difference between the characters in his films, unlike Greek tragedies: "In today's world the dispute is between good and good. We don't really know if we would be happy when any of them win."



Although Iran has a long-standing cinema tradition which was established before the 1979 revolution, Fahradi claims that most people do not know Iranian cinema's earlier examples, adding that only the output from the industry's last two decades is well-known in Turkey or internationally.



Pointing to the importance of Iranian cinema to showcase ordinary people's lives, Fahradi said that around 100 films are made annually in Iran.



Fahradi also praised Turkey's Cannes-winning director Yilmaz Guney, who mainly portrayed working-class people's lives on film, and Nuri Bilgi Ceylan, a multi-award winning filmmaker.



His fifth move 'A Separation' won a range of awards in 2012, including an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best foreign language film and a Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival.



englishnews@aa.com.tr - İstanbul