Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi found guilty of plagiarising 'A Hero'

Masihzadeh, a former student of the filmmaker, claimed the film is based on her documentary 'All Winners All Losers'

Two-time Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has been indicted in a case accusing him of stealing the premise for his new film, A Hero, from an earlier documentary, All Winners All Losers, made by Azadeh Masihzadeh, a former film student of Farhadi’s, as per The Hollywood Reporter.

A court in Tehran found evidence related to Farhadi violating Masihzadeh’s copyright for All Winners All Losers and plagiarising key elements of the documentary for his film without crediting Masihzadeh. The case will now pass to a second judge, whose ruling can then be challenged in an appellate court. The judge can also order the case to be re-examined.

Farhadi’s lawyer, Kaveh Rad, wrote on Instagram Tuesday that the case investigator has denied Masihzadeh’s complaint demanding a share of the film’s revenues in the case of a guilty verdict. Rad wrote that the first judge’s ruling should be “considered part of the trial process” and not the final word on the matter.

A separate case, filed by Mohammad Reza Shokri, the former prisoner who is the subject of Masihzadeh’s documentary, who claimed his reputation was damaged by Farhadi’s film, was dismissed by the court.

In a statement, Alexandre Mallet-Guy of Memento Production, which co-produced A Hero, said he was confident the court would eventually rule in Farhadi’s favour. “We firmly believe that the court will dismiss Ms Masihzadeh, who cannot claim ownership on matters in the public domain given that the prisoner’s story has been disclosed in both press articles and TV reports years before Ms Masihzadeh’s documentary was published,” the statement read. “Various experts in Iran have already published articles analyzing this case and concluding in favour of Asghar.”

Masihzadeh disputed this, claiming she researched Shokri’s story on her own and that there were only local news reports on his case, ones not widely available. Mallet-Guy further argued that the “story of this former prisoner finding gold in the street and giving it back to its owner is only the starting point of the plot of A Hero. The remaining is Asghar’s pure creation.”

A Hero premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, winning the grand jury prize. It earned around $2.5 million in theatrical release worldwide to date. Amazon Prime has rights for the film in the US.

Farhadi had admitted his movie, in which a man on leave from debtor’s prison finds a bag of gold coins and decides to try and return it to its rightful owner, was based on the same true story as All Winners All Losers, which Masihzadeh developed as a student at a documentary workshop taught by Farhadi. But the director did not give Masihzadeh credit for the idea, claiming he had independently researched the story.

Farhadi previously sued Masihzadeh for defamation and Masihzadeh countersued claiming Farhadi had plagiarised her original work. Earlier this week, the Iranian court decided both suits in Masihzadeh’s favour, throwing out the defamation case and finding sufficient evidence to pursue a case of plagiarism against Farhadi.

The Iranian court dismissed Farhadi’s defamation suit, saying there was “insufficient evidence” to support the director’s claims that Masihzadeh was deliberately trying to damage the filmmaker’s reputation with her plagiarism claims. Farhadi can still appeal the ruling. According to her lawyer, if Masihzadeh had been found guilty, she could potentially face a prison sentence of up to two years as well as 74 lashes (corporal punishment still being a part of the Iranian penal system).

The court has not yet ruled on Masihzadeh’s plagiarism suit, and it is unclear whether Masihzadeh’s acquittal will impact her case against Farhadi. The plagiarism case focuses on similarities between the plot of All Winners, All Losers and A Hero. Both, the documentary and the feature film are focused on the story of a man on leave from debtors’ prison who stumbles across a purse containing gold coins. But when he tries to return them, things get complicated and the man becomes the focus of a media campaign that he hopes will refurbish his image from ex-con to selfless do-gooder. Masihzadeh researched and developed her film at a 2014 documentary workshop in Iran taught by Farhadi. For his part, Farhadi has time and again denied all allegations and claims to have independently researched the original story on which Masihzadeh’s documentary is based.

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