Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi sued by student for plagiarism
Asghar Farhadi, Oscar-winning Iranian director and screenwriter, has been indicted in a plagiarism case filed by one of his former students, who claimed he took the idea for his 2021 film A Hero from a documentary she made for a film class.
A court in Tehran found evidence that Farhadi violated his student Azadeh Masihzadeh’s copyright for All Winners All Losers and plagiarized key elements of the documentary for his film. But the director did not give Masihzadeh credit for the idea, claiming he had independently researched the story.
The case will now pass to a second judge whose ruling will decide whether or not Farhadi will be convicted. This can then be appealed.
Masihzadeh made a documentary for a workshop led by Farhadi back in 2014. It was about a real-life inmate of a debtors’ prison, who found and returned a bag of gold while on leave at the prison.
Masihzadeh’s film was called All Winners, All Losers, and was shown at a film festival in the Iranian city of Shiraz in 2018.
Farhadi’s film A Hero, which stars Amir Jadidi, was screened at the Cannes film festival in 2021 and won the second place grand Prix. A Hero’s story is set in motion when Jadidi, an inmate at a debtor’s prison on a two-day leave, decides to return a lost handbag full of 17 gold coins found by his girlfriend, Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldust).
Masihzadeh told the Hollywood Reporter that Farhadi had pressured her into signing a document handing rights to the story over to him without payment. According to Farhadi, the main idea for his film came much earlier, and he was inspired by the Bertolt Brecht play Life of Galileo. The director’s claim for defamation against his student was dismissed after the court found there was insufficient evidence to suggest Masihzadeh was deliberately trying to damage the director’s reputation.
The subsequent plagiarism suit also went Masihzadeh’s way after Farhadi claimed he had independently researched the story and did not credit her on A Hero.
