Upon his arrival at the airport from France on Tue. night, Iran’s Head of Cinema Organization Hojatollah Ayoubi, who had attended this year’s Cannes Film Festival, expressed his congratulations to the Iranian nation over the triumph of Iran’s cinema at the prestigious festival, adding “after the announcement that ‘The Salesman’ won the Best Actor and Best Screenplay awards at the Cannes, I kept monitoring different TV networks and saw that the headlines of Europe’s top news channels were all about Iran’s cinema.”
Ayoubi went on to add, “while many countries, particularly the Arab states, make a lot of efforts and spend a lot of money to accompany the name of Iran with terror, war and unpleasant news, now we saw that our country was being introduced to the world through its cinema and culture, and this is indeed a very happy occasion.”
About the recent remarks by the spokesperson of Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance on the possibility of making some modifications to ‘The Salesman’ in order to make it appropriate for screening in Iran, he said “I only consider the council of film licensing as the main authority for doing modifications to a film, although I should say that in my personal opinion, Farhadi’s The Salesman does not need any modifications and the filmmaker has observed all the laws required by the Islamic Republic for making a film.”
Ayoubi further maintained that he had held talks with the president of this year’s Cannes festival, who has a highly positive view on the cinema of Iran and has accepted Ayoubi’s invitation to visit Iran.
Asghar Farhadi’s latest flick, ‘The Salesman’ won the Best Screenplay and Best Actor award for Shahab Hosseini in the 69th edition of Cannes Film Festival.
MS/3667278