Farhadi criticises Argo at Rio Film Festival
Twice Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi told audiences at the Rio Film Festival that Hollywood should not be seen as a source for faithful portrayals of foreign cultures, naming Argo as his example, Variety reported on 3 October 2026.
Farhadi was in Rio to present Parallel Tales, known in Portuguese as Contos Paralelos. It is his tenth feature as a director and a French-language drama starring Isabelle Huppert, with Catherine Deneuve among its French cast, according to festival listings. The film played in two gala sessions at Cine Odeon and Reserva Cultural Niterói during the 28th Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival.
Speaking at the festival, Farhadi said he had watched Argo when it came out and saw it as a “Hollywood thing”. The film won the Oscar for Best Picture one year after Farhadi’s own A Separation won the Oscar for Best International Film. Farhadi said films like Argo are “not deep” and are made for money as a business.
He went further on the story pattern he sees in such films. In films like Argo, he said, it is always a white man from the United States saving others. He asked why an American goes to Cuba or Iran to save people. People can save themselves, he said. Who asked Americans to come and save them?
Farhadi also criticised American claims about democracy. “You don’t have democracy. It’s a lie,” he said in Rio. He linked the remark to time he spent in the United States a few years ago, when he travelled to San Francisco to speak with incarcerated men while researching a project.
He pointed to a different model at home. He described Abbas Kiarostami’s 1983 documentary Fellow Citizen (Hamshahri) as Iran’s most political film.
Farhadi has a long and complicated history with the Oscars. He won the 2017 Academy Award for best foreign-language film for The Salesman, after boycotting that year’s ceremony, Reuters reported. In May this year, he described crackdown and war deaths as “deeply painful”, Reuters reported.
Parallel Tales arrived in Rio after a warm launch at the Cannes Film Festival, where it earned a 5.5-minute ovation, Variety reported. In Brazil the film will be distributed by Imovision, with Farhadi’s festival appearance supported by the Consulate of France, according to Festival do Rio.
