Asghar Farhadi was born in 1972 in Iran. He became interested in cinema when he was a teenager and started his education in filmmaking by joining the Youth Cinema Society of Esfahan in 1986, where he made 8mm and 16mm short films. He received his Bachelor of Dramatic Arts at Tehran University in 1998 and his Master’s in Stage Direction a few years later. He devoted his final thesis to Harold Pinter, focusing in particular on the importance of silence and pauses in the playwright's work.

He made his directorial debut with Dancing in the Dust (2002). After the success of About Elly (2009), for which he won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlinale, Farhadi gained international recognition and critical acclaim with A Separation (2011), receiving no fewer than seventy awards, including an Academy Award and a César for Best Foreign Film.

He then left Iran for France to shoot The Past (2013), which won Bérénice Bejo the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. He later returned to Iran to direct The Salesman (2016), which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, where the film won Best Screenplay and Best Actor (Shahab Hosseini). The film became Farhadi’s biggest success and earned him the second Academy Award of his career.

His film A Hero (2021) won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021. His latest film, Parallel Tales, shot in France, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2026.