Iran returns to Oscar race with Farhadi’s “Past”

After a one-year hiatus, Iran has returned to the Academy Awards with “The Past”, a family drama by Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi.

A committee assigned by the Farabi Cinema Foundation announced on Sunday that the film will represent the Iranian cinema in the 2014 Oscar race in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Starring Berenice Bejo, the French-language film is Farhadi’s first project shot outside of his homeland. The film brought the Palme d’Or for Best Actress to Bejo at Cannes Film Festival this year. The film is about an Iranian man, who has ongoing domestic problems with his French wife. He deserts her and his two children to go back to his homeland, Iran. Farhadi won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for “A Separation” in 2012. Iran submitted “A Cube of Sugar” to the Academy Awards in 2013. However, the film missed the event since the then culture minister, Mohammad Hosseini, boycotted the Oscars over the production of an anti-Islam video in the United States.