While his post-A Separation career has received quite a wide range of responses, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi triumphantly returned to Cannes Film Festival this summer with A Hero, which went on to win the Grand Pix. The film follows Rahim (Amir Jadidi), who is in prison because of a debt he was unable to repay, as he tries to convince his creditor (Mohsen Tanabandeh) during a two-day leave to withdraw his complaint against the payment of part of the sum. Set to arrive in theaters on January 7 followed by an Amazon Prime bow two weeks later, the first trailer for Iran’s Oscar entry has now arrived.
Rory O’Connor said in his Cannes review, “In A Hero, the discovery of a bag of gold coins sets the scene for a knotted Bressonian morality tale. The director is Asghar Farhadi, a filmmaker who has spent his career examining those blurred lines between right and wrong; decency and hubris; righteousness and folly. Taking place in the city of Shiraz, it proves a return to familiar ground for him: both the first he has made in his native Iran after the awful misstep that was Everybody Knows, as well as a return to the moral complexities of A Separation, still his finest film to date.”
See the trailer below.
A Hero hits theaters on January 7 and Amazon Prime on January 21.