Iranian Filmmaker Speaks Out Amidst Turmoil: A Personal and Global Perspective

A top Iranian filmmaker recently shared strong feelings about events back home. He had just been in Tehran last week and right now, those memories and headlines still weigh on him. The problems he's talking about – protests crushed in January and new conflicts that started in late February – aren’t just news stories to him. They’re personal. "These things hurt deeply, " he told reporters at a big film festival in France, "and the hurt won’t go away. " The January protests in Iran became the largest crackdown the country has ever seen. Then, a month later, airstrikes from the U. S. and Israel turned the area into a wider crisis. Living mostly outside Iran since 2023, the director says it’s hard to read the daily reports of innocent lives lost. It reminds you how conflicts don’t just stay on screens; they shake real people everywhere.This director isn’t new to global attention. One of his films was the first Iranian movie to win the Oscar for best foreign film back in 2012. Another win followed five years later, though he skipped the ceremony because of a travel ban impacting several Muslim-majority nations at that time. His influence goes beyond Iran, too. His latest movie premiered at an international film festival in France, set in Paris and starring French actors Isabelle Huppert and Vincent Cassel, and is up for the top award against 21 others.