Iranian filmmaker Farhadi acquitted of plagiarism accusation

Azadeh Masihzadeh, a former student of the Iranian filmmaker, had accused Farhadi of copying her documentary.

However, the Iranian court issued a verdict on Wednesday in the copyright infringement case based on the opinions of three prominent professors of Tehran University, experts and lecturers in the field of intellectual property rights, as well as four official art experts, who unanimously dismissed the plaintiff’s claims as baseless.

The ruling reads, “After separately examining the contents of the case and analyzing the legal and artistic aspects of the matter, all seven experts found the claims of the plaintiff invalid and ruled that the accusations against the filmmaker of the movie A Hero were baseless.”

Farhadi had earlier denied that his film movie is a work of plagiarism.

A Hero is the story of a man who finds a bag full of money and returns it, despite being on leave from prison over his debt.

The movie won the Grand Prix of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

Farhadi, a two-time Oscar winner, is considered one of the most prominent filmmakers of Iranian and world cinematography of the 21st century.

He rose to greater prominence becoming one of the few directors worldwide to have won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film twice, for “A Separation” in 2011 and “The Salesman” in 2016.