Dir. Asghar Farhadi, 2021, 127 min.
A Hero is a 2021 film by a master of Iranian cinema, two-time Oscar winner, Asghar Farhadi. It tells a deceptively simple tale of a man on a two-day leave from a debtors’ prison, who chances upon a pile of gold coins. Should he return the money to its owner, or use it to pay off some of his debt? An ordinary predicament and simple moral judgement, once confronted with complex layers of circumstances and perspectives, results in a narrative of epic proportions and multifaceted truth. Simple dilemmas give rise to difficult philosophical questions: What is the difference between doing good and not doing bad? Between lying and not telling the truth? The truth and a truth?
Screening followed by a conversation with Meta Mazaj, Senior Lecturer of Cinema & Media Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and Mahyar Entezari, Lecturer and Director, Persian Language Program, University of Pennsylvania.
A program of the Wolf Humanities Center's Forum on Truth, the Perspectives film series is presented in collaboration with Penn's Department of Cinema & Media Studies and Public Trust.
For more information visit https://wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/events/a-hero.
