'A Hero' actors Amir Jadidi and Fereshteh Sadre Orafaee at the opening of 9th Ajyal Film Festival.
Award-winning Iranian movie A Hero premiered in Qatar yesterday opening the 9th Ajyal Film Festival. The film is vying for Best International Feature for 2022 Oscars Awards.
A Hero is a powerful film that depicts social media manipulation against the frailties and failings of ordinary people. It is written and directed by two-time Oscars awardee Asghar Farhadi. The film was debuted during 2021 Cannes Film Festival bagging the Grand Prix Award.
When asked in a press conference what will be the impact of the said film to the Qatar market, leading actors Amir Jadidi portraying the role as “Rahim” and Fereshteh Sadre Orafaee as “Mrs. Radmehr” shared their insights.
Orafaee explained that geographically, Iran and Qatar are close to each other, but more than the closeness of two countries, “the main issue is the effect of social media on people, it’s a global issue, more than being a region-specific aspect.”
“Social films are about portraying issues all over the world, and this is what they are targeting, and of course they will have an effect eventually, sometimes they might not have, as we have witnessed before, they do raise awareness on certain issues they are discussing and sometimes they have results. This film was not for state authorities, we are not targeting that aspect, for us it’s about us as human beings and how we treat and how we sometimes make judgments on the others and how it affects our personal lives, how does it affect others, I believe this movie is targeting the human connection more than anything else,” she explained.
For his part, Jadidi said: “This is more of global issue that we are facing, this is a social film, and the humanitarian film is what we are concentrating on, it’s about the connection between people.”
The two actors also narrated their sacrifices while filming. Jadidi has to lose 10kg of his weight in order to perfectly portray the role of his character, while Orafee was advised not to dye her hair and not to fold her hands for the entire movie.
Both Orafaee and Jadidi believed the film will be successful globally because of its ‘human connection.’
The drama shot in Iran foretells a man named Rahim who is imprisoned due to unpaid debt, and while on a two-day leave, his girlfriend and he tried to convince his creditor to let him off the hook, but things didn’t go as planned.
A Hero will be shown in Doha Festival City on Thursday, November 11 at Vox Cinema 11. And it will be premiered on January 21 on Amazon Prime Video.
