Interview: Cannes' Best Screenplay Award winner describes theater-centered theme

Asghar Farhadi, the Iranian filmmaker whose film "The Salesman" won the Best Screenplay Award at the 69th Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, centered his film on the theater world.

He said the idea was to tell a story about a couple who were in the theater. "I had to find the play on which the story would be based on and I came up with 'Death of a Salesman,' because I realized that was a perfect match," Farhadi told Xinhua in an interview here.

"The content of Miller's play was very similar and also the characters were very similar to the ones in the film," he continued.

The Salesman (Forushande) is the story of a couple who has to move into a new apartment which bears a secret, at which point their relationship begins to turn sour. They are meanwhile performing Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

Of his writing process, Farhadi explained that when he started writing and developing the story, it was so blurred and imprecise, he'd take notes of all his ideas, collecting little bits and pieces.

"All kinds of ideas that were completely scattered, started little by little to come together and become a kind of cluster for a story," Farhadi said.

The Iranian filmmaker, who has trained and worked in theater, said the art form influenced him a lot in his way he makes his films.

"I was really inspired by some multidimensional aspects of (The Salesman) that I also used in my film," he said.

Farhadi said it was important the family in the movie be an average middle class couple.

"I wanted the relationship to be very normal in order to be able to show how, all of a sudden, after the incident, there is this kind of break in the relationship," he stressed.

His film "A Separation" won an Oscar and also gained a Golden Globe award in the best foreign language film category and the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2011.

Shahab Hosseini, the male leading character in the movie, won the best actor award Sunday evening during the award ceremony in Cannes.

Farhadi's next movie is to be produced by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. Endit