RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Dispatches) -- Twice Oscar-winning filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, who is at the Rio Film Festival to present “Parallel Tales,” spoke about the hegemony of American cinema and how Hollywood shouldn’t be seen as a source for faithful portrayals of foreign cultures.
Asked about “Argo” winning Best Picture at the Oscars, Farhadi said he watched the film at the time it came out and felt it was a “Hollywood thing.” In the film, loosely based on a true story, director Ben Affleck plays a Latino exfiltration specialist who masquerades as a Hollywood producer to rescue six Americans held captive in Tehran. The moderator mentioned how Affleck’s film portrays Iran “like you’re in hell.”
“The problem with these kinds of films in Hollywood and some people in the United States is that they look at the world from up to down,” he added. 
“Someday you should ask them: Why do you feel you’re up and we’re down? I don’t understand why they have this ego that they’re up.” 
The Iranian director then said Americans often claim to “have democracy,” but they don’t. “You don’t have democracy. It’s a lie.”
Farhadi then recalled spending time in the U.S. a few years ago when working on a project and, during research, travelling to San Francisco to speak with incarcerated men. 
“I met some people in prison who are Black, some who come from other countries, and the real America was there. But people in the world don’t see that part of the United States.”
“I have this problem when they feel they are up and they think, ‘others should be like us,’” he continued. “Even if it’s in a good way and they want to be kind to you, they wish ‘one day you’ll become like us,’ and no, I don’t want to.”
Still on “Argo,” the director said movies like it “are not deep.” “They make these movies for money; it’s a business. And in these films it’s always a white guy from the United States saving others. My question is: Why? Why does an American go to Cuba or Iran to save people? 
People understand they can save themselves. Who asked you to come and save us?”
Farhadi said that when he watches a Brazilian film, he soon forgets he is watching a story from another place in the world, and feels it is a “film about us” as people. “If one day people can travel to other countries, and if they shake hands, that’s the best way to know people, not through media. I don’t believe media can give us the whole image.”
On this, the filmmaker emphasized how his last two films, “A Hero” and “Parallel Tales,” are about how we see others and how we are seen in return. They are also heavily influenced by “how social media has shaped our lives.”
“When we see something in the media, we should be careful,” he continued, adding that most information replicated by mainstream media about Iran, for example, comes from “very simple knowledge” of real life in the country. When a singular discourse is perpetuated, the director implied, it means people are “ready to accept” when someone says “they are the enemy.” “This is something the media is doing, because the most powerful media belongs to powerful people. This is the problem.”
Farhadi spoke very briefly about his next film, reiterating it will be shot in his native language of Farsi. Enquired as to whether the film might deal with the current war on Iran and the conflict in Palestine, the director said: “Not directly,” suggesting the current political climate might have an underlying effect on the story despite not being the subject of his project.