A court in Iran has found two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi guilty of stealing the premise for his new film, A Hero, from an earlier documentary, All Winners All Losers, which was directed by Azadeh Masihzadeh, a former Farhadi film student.
A court in Tehran found Farhadi guilty of violating Masihzadeh’s copyright on All Winners All Losers and plagiarizing key elements of the documentary for his film, without naming Masihzadeh.
The judgment is binding and cannot be appealed. A second judge will now decide Farhadi’s sentence. In the worst case, the director could be forced to give Masihzadeh “all proceeds from showing the film in theaters or online” and could even face jail time.
A Hero premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize. It has earned around $2.5 million in theatrical releases worldwide to date. Amazon Prime owns the US rights to the film.
Farhadi had admitted that his film, in which a man who was released from debtors’ prison finds a bag of gold coins and decides to return them to their rightful owner, is based on the same true story as All Winners All Losers, which Masihzadeh developed as Student in a documentary workshop led by Farhadi. But the director gave Masihzadeh no credit for the idea, claiming he researched the story independently.
Farhadi sued Masihzadeh for defamation, and Masihzadeh countered that Farhadi had plagiarized her original work.
This week, the Iranian court ruled in favor of Masihzadeh in both lawsuits, dismissing the defamation case and finding Farhadi guilty of plagiarism.
has reached out to Farhadi through his lawyer in France representing A Hero’s co-producer Memento Production, but has yet to receive a response.