Javad Shamaqdari told reporters, “The crucial factor will be US policies that are designed to send Iran signals at that time. If they choose to continue their enmity, they will never nominate ‘Nader and Simin.’”
But in the United States, the US distributor of the film knows Washington has no role in Oscar nominations. The US distributor is pushing hard not only for a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, which most commentators take to be a near-certainty now, but also for Best Director and Best Screenplay.
Asghar Farhadi, the film’s director, has been in Los Angeles trying to help out by plugging the picture.
Michael Barker, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, which is distributing “Nader and Simin,” says his company has long had its eye on Oscar nominations for the movie beyond the foreign-language nod.
“Academy members pay attention to high-quality foreign-language films and American independent films all the time,” Barker told the Los Angeles Times. “You just have to put [the film] in front of them and say, ‘Please consider this in other categories.’”
If it earns nominations in three categories — foreign film, original screenplay and director — it would join an elite group of movies that have achieved an Oscar trifecta, including “8-1/2,” “Seven Beauties” and “Life Is Beautiful.”
Farhadi traveled from Iran to Los Angeles this month for a brief publicity visit. “Actually, this was a film which, in comparison to my other films, I had anticipated would have some difficulty connecting with non-Farsi-speaking audiences, because its subject matter seemed more complex,” Farhadi told the Los Angeles Times. “As a result, I am now confronted by something I had not in any way foreseen.”
Farhadi, 39, says the film met with considerable resistance from several factions of Iran’s Oscar submission committee: those who felt the film “pleased the West”; others who considered the movie, which involves divorce, morality and murder, too dark; and a third, larger group whose objection, Farhadi said, “stemmed from the fact that ‘this filmmaker is not one of us, so why should we contribute to his success?’”
He said, “I’m not one of the people whose work the government particularly likes.”
This isn’t Farhadi’s first run at an Oscar. A previous film, the award-winning relationship drama “About Elly,” was Iran’s official submission for the 2009 foreign-language prize. However, the movie’s US distributor went bankrupt, and the movie was never able to seriously compete.
To date, only one film from Iran has been nominated for the foreign-language Oscar—”Children of Heaven” in 1999. That was a bad year to be up for that Oscar. Italy’s “Life Is Beautiful,” about an Italian Jew confined to a Nazi concentration camp, was one of the most respected and honored films that year. Not only did it win best foreign language Oscar, but it also took the best actor and best original score awards.
Farhadi told The New York Times that as he traveled around American and European film festivals promoting the movie this year, he found that people arrived expecting to see something strange and exotic since the film was Iranian and emerged surprised and pleased that they found characters they could identify and empathize with.
Payman Moaadi, who plays the male lead, said, “At a lot of these festivals, they tell me afterward that they were expecting deserts and camels [and] thinking that women in our country are not allowed even to drive, much less ask for a divorce. But Asghar is showing a new image of Iran, portraying the way that millions of normal people live in Iran today.”
