On Monday (Mumbai Academy of Moving Image) MAMI with Le Reve Cinemas hosted a special screening of The Salesman. The film written and directed by Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, winning awards for Best Screenplay and Best Actor. The film has received immense appreciation globally and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It was also the winner of the Audience Choice Award at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star last year.

The house full screening was attended by film lovers and film personalities Directors Anurag Kashyap, Alankrita Shrivastava, Guneet Amarpreet Kaur, Shlok Sharma and actor Vicky  Kaushal, Rajshri  Deshpande, Aamir Bashir and Patralekha.

The Salesman is set in the world of theater. Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) and Emad (Shahab Hosseini), a youngish married couple living in Tehran, are starring in their theater group’s production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.  After their old flat becomes damaged, Emad and Rana, are forced to move into a new apartment. An incident linked to the previous tenant of their new home dramatically changes the couple’s life.

Festival Creative Director, Smriti Kiran was attending the film event organized by the Doha Film Institute called Qumra earlier this month. Director Asghar Farhadi was one of the masters at the event. This is a message he gave her as part of a skype interview for the audience in India who will get to watch the film once it releases on the 31st of March.

“I’ve been to India several times and I’ve been to the Mumbai film festival. What I find really striking in India is the passion of the young cinema lovers. They pursue cinema in a very serious way. They are very passionate and I am very hopeful about the future of Indian cinema. I receive many messages, emails, letters from Indian cinema lovers. It’s something that I find very comforting and I see that their insight and relationship with cinema is very important and very vivid.”

Smriti Kiran, Creative Director, Mumbai Film Festival said, “I was fortunate to attend Asghar Farhadi’s Masterclass at Qumra earlier this month and also interview him as part of a select group of journalists. I am a great admirer of his work. His film, The Salesman, was the most popular film at the Mumbai Film Festival last year. There were overwhelming crowds at every screening. The Salesman is releasing in India on the 31st of March. Producer Sunil Doshi launches his label Sunil Doshi presents with The Salesman and promises to release such stellar films in India. It is a privilege to be able to screen the film again for the terrific and passionate audience in Mumbai. Also we need more people like Sunil who will work towards this shared mission to bring the best cinema from around the world to India and get them a theatrical release so they reach as wide an audience as possible. It is not true that we don’t have audience for this kind of cinema in India. We need to reinvent the exhibition, publicity, promotion and outreach wheel.”

Producer, Sunil Doshi, said, “I am delighted with our association with MAMI for the special screening of Oscar winning film, The Salesman as it accelerates our prime objective of reaching out and bringing cinema to the audience of such acclaimed masterpiece! This is truly a celebration and festival of films for the people and by the people!”

The Salesman will release in theatres on March 31st, 2017.