Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi had been thinking about the concept behind “ A Hero ” long before he started making movies.
In fact, the spark came before he even knew that he’d ever make a film. As a theater student, he saw the Bertolt Brecht play “Galileo” and it triggered an idea about a person who does a good deed, has a quick ascent and even quicker descent. It’s been rattling in his brain since.
“Why does a society need to make somebody a hero?” Farhadi said through translator Rayan Farzad. “And when they make somebody a hero, it seems that they are kind of asking others to be like that one person, which is unrealistic because people cannot live some other person’s life.”
But Farhadi is reluctant to explain too much.