A few days ago, I posted about the victory of Iranian film “A Separation” in the best foreign-language film category at the Oscars (over the Israeli film “Footnote”), and the Iranian government’s exploitation of this victory in its propaganda war against Israel.
Now comes word of nice encounters between the two delegations.
During a break in the ceremony, “Footnote” director Joseph Cedar and the film’s two stars, Shlomo Bar-Aba and Lior Ashkenazi, approached the Iranian delegation to congratulate them. Producer Moshe Edery recounts that after shaking hands, Bar-Aba said to the Iranians: “‘I hope you purchase our film to screen in Iran, and if that happens, I promise to come!'” Edery rebuked the actor. “Don’t promise them you’ll come,” he quipped “because we won’t be able to hand over another 500 prisoners to free you.”
Prior to the ceremony, Bar-Aba met the members of the Iranian delegation at their hotel. “I told them our film is about conflict, clashes within the family between a father and a son,” recalls the Israeli actor. “And then they said that their film is also about that. It turns out we are all walking family conflicts. The charming Iranian actress told me ‘we want to resolve the conflicts between our countries, but we don’t have time for it because we are busy with family conflicts and that’s where it all starts.’ She said the path to reconciliation starts within our own families. ‘Look how similar we are,’ she said to me.”
And apparently there’s more:
An Iranian director participated in a pre-Oscars panel event with an Israeli filmmaker without incident, despite the growing tensions between the two countries.
Footnote director Joseph Cedar was seated next to Iran’s Asghar Farhadi at the event on Saturday evening. Mr Farhadi’s film, A Separation, triumphed over Footnote at the ceremony on Sunday to take home the Best Foreign Language Film award.
So while the Iranian government would like to believe the Oscar win represents Iranian supremacy over Israel, it really seems to represent the potential for the average Iranian and Israeli to get along.
