Any murder is a crime. Under no circumstances can I accept another human being losing their life.
At Cannes, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi — exiled from his homeland since 2023 — offered a quiet but firm moral argument: that grief is not a zero-sum act, and that the deaths of protesters shot in the streets and civilians killed from above are not competing tragedies but parallel ones, each demanding the same human reckoning. Speaking days after a visit to Tehran, where the weight of both kinds of loss had settled on him, Farhadi placed his words inside a longer story about what it means to bear witness when silence has become a form of complicity. His statement was not merely political — it was a filmmaker insisting that the moral imagination must be wide enough to hold more than one wound at a time.
- Farhadi arrived at Cannes carrying the unresolved grief of a recent Tehran visit, where the reality of both protest killings and war casualties had pressed against him with equal force.
- The tension at the heart of his statement was the false choice he refused to make — that condemning one form of state violence somehow excuses or endorses another.
- His words landed in a charged international context: a conflict involving Iran, the United States, and Israel, and an ongoing crackdown on protesters inside a country he can no longer safely call home.
- Fellow Iranian filmmakers Panahi and Rasoulof have already paid the price for speaking — one sentenced in absentia, one living in German exile — making Farhadi's public statement at Cannes an act with measurable personal stakes.
- The trajectory is one of increasing pressure on Iranian cinema as a site of dissent, with exile becoming the only stage from which certain truths can be spoken aloud.
Asghar Farhadi took the stage at a Cannes press conference on Thursday, hours after the premiere of his new film Parallel Tales, and spoke about two kinds of death he could not stop thinking about. He had been in Tehran the week before, and the experience had left him carrying what he described as the weight of two tragic events — the killing of civilians in bombing campaigns, and the killing of protesters shot in the streets by their own government.
Farhadi, who has lived outside Iran since 2023, refused to rank these losses or to suggest that mourning one required silence about the other. His argument was deliberate and plainly stated: a person could condemn state violence against demonstrators and also condemn the deaths of innocents in war, without contradiction. Both were murders. Both were crimes. "Any murder is a crime," he said. "Under no circumstances can I accept the fact that another human being should lose their life, be it at war, be it executions, be it massacres of demonstrators."
The director — who holds two Oscars and a Cannes Grand Prix, and who boycotted the 2017 Academy Awards to protest Trump's travel ban — has vowed not to make films inside Iran while censorship laws remain in place. Parallel Tales, starring Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, and Vincent Cassel, exists precisely because he can work freely in France. At the press conference, that freedom was itself the subject: he was asked about the war, about repression at home, and each time he returned to the same insistence — that the deaths are real, and that naming them without qualification is the minimum moral act.
Farhadi is not alone in this position, nor in its cost. Jafar Panahi, who won the Palme d'Or last year, was subsequently sentenced in absentia to prison. Mohammad Rasoulof, honored at Cannes in 2024, now lives in exile in Germany. Iranian cinema has become a geography of dissent, and the price of speaking is measured in travel bans, imprisonment, and permanent departure. Farhadi's statement at Cannes — calm, unambiguous, and made in public — was itself the kind of act he can only perform outside his country.
Asghar Farhadi stood at a press conference in Cannes on Thursday night, hours after his new film Parallel Tales had premiered, and spoke about two kinds of death he could not stop thinking about. The Oscar-winning Iranian director had been in Tehran the week before, and the weight of what he'd witnessed—or learned about—was still with him. He described the experience as carrying the impact of "two tragic events."
One was the killing of civilians, including children, in bombing campaigns. The other was the death of protesters shot in the streets by their own government. Farhadi, who has lived outside Iran since 2023, refused to rank them. He refused to suggest that condemning one meant accepting the other. "To express one's indignation in the face of the death of innocent people in the bombing doesn't mean one is in favour of the executions and death of protesters," he said. The logic was simple and, he seemed to believe, necessary to state aloud: a person could grieve both without contradiction. A person could feel empathy for those shot during demonstrations and also for those killed from above. Both were murders. Both were crimes.
Farhadi has won the Grand Prix at Cannes before—for A Hero in 2021—and has two Oscars for best international feature, for A Separation and The Salesman. He boycotted the Academy Awards in 2017 to protest Donald Trump's travel ban on Muslim-majority countries, including Iran. He has vowed not to make films in Iran while censorship laws remain in place. Earlier this year, he called attacks on civilian infrastructure in the conflict "a war crime" and urged fellow filmmakers to speak out. Now, at Cannes, he was doing what he said filmmakers should do: speaking.
Parallel Tales is set in Paris and stars Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, and Vincent Cassel. It was loosely inspired by an episode of Krzysztof Kieslowski's television series Dekalog. The film exists because Farhadi can make it outside Iran—free from the censorship that has confined Iranian cinema for decades. At the press conference, he was asked about that freedom, about the war involving Iran, the United States, and Israel, and about the repression of protesters back home. He answered each question by returning to the same point: the deaths are real, they are tragic, and they demand to be named without qualification.
"Any murder is a crime," he said. "Under no circumstances can I accept the fact that another human being should lose their life, be it at war, be it executions, be it massacres of demonstrators. It's extremely cruel and tragic that, in the world today, despite all the progress we're supposed to have made, every morning we wake up with news of new innocents being killed without any reason whatsoever."
Farhadi is not alone among Iranian filmmakers in speaking out from exile. Jafar Panahi won the Palme d'Or last year for It Was Just an Accident, then was sentenced in absentia to prison and a travel ban for "propaganda activities." Mohammad Rasoulof received a special prize in 2024 for The Seed of the Sacred Fig and now lives in exile in Germany. Iranian cinema has become a space where dissent is articulated, and where the cost of that dissent is measured in imprisonment and exile. Farhadi's statement at Cannes—that both state violence and war deaths are equally worthy of moral condemnation—was itself an act of the kind of filmmaking he can only do outside his country.
Notable Quotes
To express one's indignation in the face of the death of innocent people in the bombing doesn't mean one is in favour of the executions and death of protesters.— Asghar Farhadi
It's extremely cruel and tragic that, in the world today, despite all the progress we're supposed to have made, every morning we wake up with news of new innocents being killed without any reason whatsoever.— Asghar Farhadi
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When you say both deaths are equally tragic, are you worried that sounds like moral equivalence—like you're saying the two sides are the same?
No. I'm saying that innocent people are innocent. A child killed in a bombing is innocent. A protester shot in the street is innocent. The crime is the same even if the perpetrators are different.
But doesn't speaking from exile change how your words land? You're safe in France. The people still in Iran aren't.
That's exactly why I have to speak. I have the freedom to say what people there cannot. That's not a privilege I can waste by staying silent.
Your new film is set in Paris, made with French actors, financed outside Iran. Is that a loss—not making films in your own country?
It's a loss, yes. But it's the cost of not compromising. I won't make films under censorship. That would be a different kind of loss.
Other Iranian filmmakers—Panahi, Rasoulof—have paid even higher prices. Does that weigh on you?
Every day. It reminds me that what I'm doing at Cannes, speaking freely, is only possible because others have already paid. That's a responsibility.