TEHRAN – Two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi received an honorary award at the opening ceremony of the 20th edition of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival in the Spanish island on Friday as a significant figure of the history of the festival.

Farhadi won the Golden Lady Harimaguada Award, the top prize of the festival, in 2007 for his drama “Fireworks Wednesday”, about a woman who doubts her husband’s loyalty.

The festival, which will run until April 18, plans to pay tribute to the Iranian director by programming a brief retrospective made up of four of his films, “Fireworks Wednesday”, “About Elly”, “Nader and Simin, A Separation” and “The Salesman”.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper Canarias7 before receiving the award, Farhadi said that there is no single language spoken in the whole world, however, the language of feelings including violence, love, and hatred is shared among all people.

“There are two types of filmmakers. Some make their movies from their heart and the unconscious. Others make them from logic and reason. The latter has the ability to change things. I make them from the heart and the unconscious, so I cannot control everything,” he added.

“I cannot separate a local work from the universal. A local work, if done well, can be understood all over the world. There should be no border between the local and the global works,” he noted.

Referring to his 2018 thriller “Everybody Knows”, starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, he mentioned that he is eager to make a new movie in Spain again but he hasn’t made up his mind yet.

Farhadi’s “The Salesman” and “A Separation”, both in his native language, won him Oscars for best foreign-language film. “A Separation” received a best screenplay Oscar nomination.

The movies grossed $23 million worldwide and more than $7 million in the U.S.

ABU/MG