The Salesman, a film by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, has won the Oscar for the best foreign-language picture at the Academy Awards ceremony.
Media reports say Farhadi refused to attend the February 26 Oscars in protest of U.S. President Donald Trump's now-suspended executive order temporarily banning visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, from entering the United States.
According to Reuters, Farhadi chose two Iranian-Americans — a female engineer and a former NASA scientist — to represent him at the Oscars ceremony.
Anousheh Ansari, an engineer who was the first female space tourist, read a statement on behalf of Farhadi.
In a statement read on his behalf, Farhadi said he was boycotting the ceremony “out of respect for the people of my country and those of the other six nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S.”
“Dividing the world into 'us' and 'our enemies' categories creates fear, a deceitful justification for aggression and war,” the statement said.
Trump's immigration crackdown was halted by a U.S. federal judge. He has said his team is writing a new order to be revealed soon.
The Salesman is drama telling the story of a young couple Emad and Rana who play the lead roles in a local theater's presentation of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Their personal relationship suffers after they move into an apartment that was previously occupied by a prostitute who hosted clients there.
The Salesman is a 2016 Iranian drama film. It was included in the ‘In Competition’ section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. At Cannes, Shahab Hosseini won the award for Best Actor and Asghar Farhadi won the award for Best Screenplay.
Farhadi won the Oscar for the best foreign language film in 2012 for A Separation.
Meanwhile, Syrian war documentary The White Helmets won the Oscar for the best short documentary.
The film produced by Netflix is about rescue workers, some who have lost their lives, who struggle to save Syrians affected by the six-year civil war.
Al Jazeera reports that a Syrian cinematographer who worked on an Oscar-nominated documentary has been barred from entering the United States to attend Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony.
Despite being granted a US visa, Khaled Khatib, 21 – who documented Syria's civil war in the film The White Helmets – was scheduled to depart from the Turkish capital Istanbul on Saturday before US officials reportedly discovered “derogatory information” about him, according to Al Jazeera.
