UPDATE with producer statement: A Hero producer Alexandre Mallet-Guy has released a statement following reports of a plagiarism judgement against Oscar-winning filmmaker Asghar Farhadi in Iran over the movie. The complaint was lodged by Azadeh Masihzadeh, a former student of Farhadi’s who accused the filmmaker of stealing the idea for A Hero from her documentary All Winners All Losers. In his statement (read it in full below), Mallet-Guy says “We firmly believe that the court will dismiss Ms Masihzadeh who cannot claim ownership on matters in the public domain.”
PREVIOUS: A guilty judgement in a plagiarism case against Oscar winning director Asghar Farhadi is not the final verdict of the court, the filmmaker’s lawyer has said. The case involves Farhadi’s A Hero, which won the Grand Prize in Cannes last year and was Iran’s submission for the International Feature Film category at the Academy Awards.
A former student of Farhadi’s, Azadeh Masihzadeh, has accused the filmmaker of stealing the idea for A Hero from her documentary All Winners All Losers. The doc was made during a workshop overseen by the A Separation and The Salesman auteur.
Farhadi’s lawyer, Kaveh Rad, wrote on Instagram today that the case investigator has denied Masihzadeh’s complaint regarding the sharing of the film’s revenues. Confusing things, however, reports have circulated that Farhadi has been found guilty of plagiarism and that the decision is binding. Rad wrote (translated from Farsi) that “the decision is not the final verdict of the court and is considered part of the trial process, and in the continuation of the trial process, the case will be reexamined first in the second criminal court and then in the appellate court.”
Local media meanwhile is reporting that the Tehran Culture and Media Court, “has considered the documents and the reasons provided for the occurrence of the crime and its commission by Mr. Farhadi to be sufficient and has issued a final order to summon Mr. Farhadi to trial.”
The summons, according to local press, is a decision that the judicial authority of the prosecutor’s office issues after a guilty finding. The summons is then sent to the second criminal court to make a decision and determine the amount of punishment. The result of the summons is that the accused must appear in the criminal court for the charge to be investigated.
Rad added he hoped the decision would be violated “during the proceedings at a higher level, by referring the matter to an expert and seeking the expert opinion of professors and experts in the field of copyright.”
Masihzadeh has also told local press that Farhadi sued her for defamation, but the complaints were rejected.
A Hero centers on Rahim (Amir Jadidi), a man imprisoned for unpaid debts who, during a brief furlough, returns a newly discovered handbag filled with gold coins to its rightful owner rather than use the money to repay his delinquent accounts. Writer-director Farhadi recently told Deadline that he “had been reading stories like this in the press for some time… of ordinary individuals, who briefly made newspaper headlines because of an altruistic act. These stories often had common peculiarities. A Hero was not inspired by a specific news item, but while writing it, I had these stories in mind.”
According to ABC News, Farhadi brought a list of newspaper excerpts to his workshop at Tehran art institution Karnameh where Masihzadeh was a student. Karnameh manager Negar Eskandarfar told ABC that all the students in that class then worked on documentaries by finding characters they were assigned and telling their stories. But Masihzadeh contends she found her story by herself, centering it around a single father who is in prison for financial reasons and who found a purse full of money during a furlough and how returning the purse affected his life.
Here is Mallet-Guy’s statement:
To whom it may concern.
“A Hero” is my 8th film with Asghar Farhadi as a distributor and my 4th as a producer. We have won together 2 Oscars for best foreign film and many awards at Cannes Film Festival including the Grand Prix for “A Hero” last year.
I have an absolute trust in Asghar who I consider one of the most talented and creative directors worldwide.
I am aware that one of Asghar’s former students who directed a documentary film under his supervision and a former prisoner whose story has been, among others, one of Asghar Farhadi’ sources of inspiration for the Film, have filed complaints in Iran with respect to the film “A Hero”.
I have been in touch with Asghar’s Iranian lawyer and have been informed about the outcome of these complaints. Due to the false information which has been spread by the press, I think that it is important to make everyone aware of the decision of the judicial investigator rendered on March 14, 2022 in Iran regarding the film. The judicial investigator’s role is to investigate, gather evidence and decide whether or not the case should be heard by a court.
The judicial investigator ruled as follows:
• he dismissed the claim that the former prisoner reputation was damaged by the film and refused to refer it to a court;
• he dismissed the claim that Ms. Masihzadeh should be entitled to a share of revenues derived from the exploitation of the film and refused to refer it to a court;
• he referred Mrs. Masihzadeh claim for copyright infringement of her documentary film to the court
We firmly believe that the court will dismiss Ms Masihzadeh who cannot claim ownership on matters in the public domain given that the prisoner’s story has been disclosed in both press articles and TV reports years before Mrs. Masihzadeh’s documentary was published. Various experts in Iran have already published articles analyzing this case and concluding in favor of Asghar.
I think it is important to emphasize here that ”A Hero”, like Asghar Farhadi’s other films, features complex situations where the lives of the characters are built upon one another. The story of this former prisoner finding gold in the street and giving it back to its owner is only the starting point of the plot of “A Hero”. The remaining is Asghar’s pure creation.