Presented in collaboration with Penn's Department of Cinema & Media Studies and Public Trust

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 judgment, 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

Meta Mazaj is a Senior Lecturer in Cinema Studies at Penn. She has published on critical theory, Balkan cinema, new European cinema, film and nationalism. She is the author of National and Cynicism in Post 1990s Balkan Cinema (VDM Verlag, 2008), co-author, with Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, of Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2011), and co-author, with Shekhar Deshpande, of World Cinema: A Critical Introduction (Routledge, 2018). Her recent courses include: Global Film Theory, Global Genres, Transnational Cinema, Film Festivals, Cinema of the Balkans, Historical Film, American Independent Cinema.

Mahyar Entezari is a Lecturer in Foreign Languages in Penn's Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. As the Director of the Persian Language Program, he leads curriculum development and program management. In addition to teaching Persian (also known as Farsi or Dari), he offers courses on modern Iran. His research explores national identity, political discourse, and cultural expression in Iran, analyzing how cinema, literature, and state rhetoric influence collective memory, ideology, and resistance in the Islamic Republic.