The Golden Globes are the most prestigious film award after the Oscars.
The Golden Globe was presented to director Asghar Farhadi by, of all people, Madonna. She did not lean forward looking for the usual Hollywood kiss; it wasn’t known if she had been warned that a kiss got another Iranian director in trouble last year. Madonna and Farhadi did shake hands.
The night before the Golden Globe awards, the film won the Best Foreign Language Film award from the Broadcast Film Critics Association.
A week earlier, the US National Society of Film Critics chose it as Best Foreign Language Film.
The list goes on and on with almost every award-granting group naming “Nader and Simon” as the Best Foreign Language Film of 2011.
The Oscar nominations will be unveiled next Tuesday, January 24. Few doubt “Nader and Simin” will be one of the five nominees. The question is whether it will pull down the biggest award one month later when the Oscar winners are named.
In winning the Golden Globe Sunday, “Nader and Simin” beat out films from China, Belgium, Spain and the USA. Oddly, there was a “foreign language film” from the USA it was filmed in Bosnia in Serbo-Croatian but directed by Angelina Jolie.
So, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi can have the rare pleasure of saying he is one of the few people ever to beat Angelina Jolie out of an award!
Farhadi was in Hollywood, wearing a suit, for the award. He was joined on stage by Peyman Moaadi, who wrote the screenplay with Farhadi and also acted in the film.
Farhadi, speaking passable English, said he debated what to say when he reached the stage, then quieted the crowd when he said: “I just prefer to say something about my people. I think they are a truly just loving people.” He won a loud round of applause as he left the stage.
On top of all the awards, The Wall Street Journal no friend of the regime in Tehran said “Nader and Simin: A Separation” was the best film of 2011 not the best foreign language film, but the best film from anywhere in any language, including English.
The film tells the story of a middle-class Tehran couple who separate, with the wife wanting to emigrate and the husband insisting on staying to care for his aged father.
While it has some unique Persian aspects to it, the film has found broad appeal precisely because so many people in all cultures can relate to a story of a couple facing marital strife and trying to do right by their child. That child is played by Farhadi’s daughter.