Cinema 
1071 
Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, a major figure in contemporary cinema and two-time winner of the Academy Award for Best International Feature (A Separation, 2012; The Salesman, 2017), is currently filming his new feature in Paris. Entitled Parallel Tales, the film, whose production began on September 8, 2025, is already shaping up to be one of the year’s most highly anticipated projects.
For this new work, Farhadi has brought together an exceptional cast spanning several generations of French cinema. Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Cassel, Virginie Efira, Pierre Niney and Adam Bessa all feature in the film, underscoring both its international scope and artistic ambition.
According to Iranian film critic Mansour Jahani, Huppert and Deneuve have already shot their first scenes. Audiences will thus have the chance to see these legendary actresses in the sensitive and demanding cinematic world of Farhadi, renowned for his meticulous direction of actors.
Paris, Setting and Symbol
This is not the first time Asghar Farhadi has chosen the French capital as a backdrop. In 2013, he shot The Past there, starring Bérénice Bejo and Tahar Rahim, a film marked by the confrontation of memory, unspoken truths and family fractures. With Parallel Tales, Paris once again becomes a storytelling space—at once cosmopolitan and intimate—reflecting the universal tension between identity and destiny, themes dear to the director.
The film is produced by the French company Memento Production and the American Anonymous Content, in coproduction with Farhadi himself. Several Italian and Belgian partners are also involved in the project, once again underlining the prestigious position Farhadi occupies, not only as a brilliant filmmaker but also as a cultural bridge-builder between continents.
The Master of Labyrinthine Narrative
Since his beginnings in Iran, Farhadi has established a unique style: a form of writing in which the personal becomes political, and where moral dilemmas expose the fractures of society. His films, built like narrative labyrinths, place characters in impossible situations, probing truth and its many grey areas.
In a world torn by divisions, Farhadi continues to explore our contradictions and wounds through fiction. His new film, by its very title, suggests the coexistence of parallel stories, of multiple truths—a theme that deeply resonates with his vision of both cinema and society.
Eagerly awaited by critics and audiences alike, Parallel Tales is expected to mark a new milestone in Farhadi’s body of work, as he remains committed to examining human dilemmas and social fractures through stories of universal intensity.