E-Paper
Asghar Farhadi’s new film to be on winemakers in Spain
The ace Iranian filmmaker’s next is set in Spain and deals with the lives of winemakers.
After a Parisian adventure with The Past, Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi is all set to begin a Spanish saga with a new movie. He will begin work hopefully with the country’s most celebrated acting couple, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.
Farhadi -- whose The Salesman won the Best Script Palm and the Best Actor Palm (for Shahab Hosseini) at Cannes 2016 -- has had a meteoric rise with movies like A Separation winning the Best Oscar for Foreign Language Picture and The Past that clinched a Golden Globe nod and an acting prize at Cannes for Berenice Bejo.
Farhadi -- who will be in Spain during the next few weeks to scout for locations -- is not yet telling us what the story of his new movie will be. But we do know that it revolves around a family of winemakers living in Spain. “It’s a psychological thriller with a dash of Agatha Christie in it” as Farhadi said at Cannes. The film will be in Spanish.
Read: Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman added to Cannes Competition
Read: Iranian director Asghar Farhadi helming third man-woman story
The Past was largely in French, unlike his A Separation and The Salesman, which were in Persian or Farsi.
Farhadi strays into Michael Haneke’s territory with The Salesman, where a couple’s misfortunes threaten the basis of their marital relationship. Certainly, not in the class of A Separation, The Salesman traces the lives of a schoolteacher, Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and his wife Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti). When they move into a new flat, whose earlier occupant was a prostitute, the couple find themselves in a mess, when a stranger walks into their home and watches Rana in the shower -- in a case of mistaken identity.
