What fascinated me about the play [Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller], and what I became fixed on using myself, was the focus that Miller placed on the relationships between people within a family unit … While the play centers on a family drama, that drama actually gives you a complete understanding of what the spirit and atmosphere were like outside the four walls of their home during that period of American history. That is the play’s greatest quality and what really captured my interest; there is a strong social aspect to it … My films deliberately try to place couples in dire situations, which they must overcome and find a way out of. Their relationships reach a point of crisis due to the situation that they are confronted with. They don’t usually have to deal with that crisis from the very beginning of the film, but they become more entangled in it as the story progresses … The couple in Forushande were living a normal life until they were forced to move to an apartment previously occupied by a prostitute. At that point, they inadvertently become entangled in a new set of circumstances, which puts pressure on their relationship and reveals a different side to them that neither one had seen before … Throughout the majority of my films, the female characters always try to look ahead … It’s the same kind of situation in Forushande: we expect the female character to have a strong reaction because she was the victim of the attack, but she slowly seems to let go of her anger instead. While she does not forgive her male attacker, she is able to control herself … Both of those characters are transformed as the story progresses. Emad seems a very affable and considerate person at first: in the midst of all the chaos, we see him go back to help his next-door neighbor carry her disabled son out of the building. Rana is the one who seems more concerned about herself and her husband’s welfare. But as we get further into the story, the two characters switch places and Rana becomes the one more concerned about others; she tries to protect the reputation of the man who hurt her, even though she has not forgiven him.

Asghar Farhadi, in Asghar Farhadi: Interviews, edited by Ehsan Khoshbakht and Drew Todd, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2023