‘The Salesman’ Director Asghar Farhadi on Erasing Fears Through Film

The day after he won the 2012 Best Foreign Language Oscar for “A Separation,” filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, who is a master at exposing domestic discord through his multi-layered screenplays, told a touching story about an inspirational encounter with a fellow Iranian.

The tour operator told Farhadi that “he’d been doing this for a number of years but that he rarely told the tourists that he was Iranian they would be afraid to get on his tour bus … he would just say some other country.”

[...] the tour operator was inspired by Farhadi to tell to be more open about his country of birth. 

“The Salesman,” Farhadi’s first film shot in Iran since the Oscar-winning “A Separation,” tells of a couple of theater actors whose relationship is tested when they move into a new building.

The film is a slow-burning, visceral drama that explores the psychology of vengeance and a relationship put under strain while continuing to explore the condition of women in Iran and the male psyche.

[...] once relocated, a sudden eruption of violence linked to the previous tenant of their new home dramatically changes the couple’s life, creating a simmering tension between husband and wife.