At One time, I would be locked in a cinema in Mumbai from 9 am to 12 midnight for a couple of days, watching Oscar-winning/nominated films back to back. But those theatrical pleasures have nearly vanished. While a few such films are streaming online, Asghar Farhadi’s Ghahreman (A Hero) has released theatrically in India from April 8. The much-feted Farhadi has won two Oscars for A Separation and The Salesman, and his A Hero won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival 2021, Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) for Best Director. After directing The Past, in French, with French stars Tahar Rahim and Berenice Bejo, and Everybody Knows, in Spanish, with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, he returns to making a feature in Iran in Farsi. Kudos to Ashwani Kumar’s Impact Films for distributing the film theatrically in over 10 cities all-India, including Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Gurgaon, Pune, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Kochi, etc, and 10 theatres in Mumbai, see bookmyshow.

Rahim Soltani (Amir Jadidi), in prison because of a debt he was unable to repay, gets two days’ leave. He tries to convince his creditor Bahram, a relative, to accept part-payment and withdraw his complaint; the debt was intended to set up a business, but his business partner vanished with the money. He is separated from his wife and coincidentally, just in time, his girlfriend Farkhondeh (a confident Sahar Goldust), finds a bag of gold coins in the street: initially they try to sell them to repay the loan, but when they find it’s a fraction of the 150,000 tomans owed, Rahim decides to advertise and return the bag to its owner, a woman who claims it. His son, who stutters, lives with his sister Mali’s family.