General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Past (گذشته) (2013 film)

The Past (French: Le Passé; Persian: گذشته) is a 2013 French-Italian drama film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, his first film made outside Iran and his first in the French language, which he does not speak.¹^•² It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 66th Cannes Film Festival, where Bérénice Bejo won the Award for Best Actress and the film received the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.³

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Asghar Farhadi, who also wrote the screenplay; script adaptation by Massoumeh Lahidji¹^•⁴
Production	France and Italy, 2013; produced by Alexandre Mallet-Guy for Memento Production with France 3 Cinéma and BIM Distribuzione¹^•⁵
Running time	130 minutes; French and Persian dialogue¹^•⁴
Cannes 2013	In Competition; Best Actress (Bérénice Bejo) and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury; Palme d'Or nominee³
Principal cast	Bérénice Bejo (Marie), Tahar Rahim (Samir), Ali Mosaffa (Ahmad), Pauline Burlet (Lucie), Elyes Aguis (Fouad), Jeanne Jestin (Léa)¹
French release	15 May 2013; around one million admissions in France⁵^•⁶
Oscar submission	Iran's official selection for the 86th Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film⁴

Spoilers

Plot

After a four-year separation, Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) returns to Paris from Tehran at the request of his estranged French wife Marie (Bérénice Bejo) to finalize their divorce so that she can marry her new partner Samir (Tahar Rahim).¹^•⁴ During his brief stay, Ahmad discovers the conflicting nature of Marie's relationship with her teenage daughter Lucie, and his efforts to improve that relationship unveil a secret from their past.¹

The household also contains Marie's younger daughter Léa and Samir's young son Fouad, whose mother lies in a coma after a suicide attempt.¹^•⁷ Critics described the film as an examination of a stepfamily in which everyone's secrets gradually disentangle, with the Ecumenical Jury reading it as a study of responsibility for past mistakes.³

Production

From Berlin to Paris. After the international success of A Separation (2011), Farhadi and his family moved to Paris so he could write a screenplay set outside Iran.⁶ Producer Alexandre Mallet-Guy of Memento Films recalled that Farhadi had first mentioned a story he wanted to shoot in Berlin; Mallet-Guy suggested transposing the action to Paris in early 2011, and Farhadi settled there and wrote an entirely different film, drawing on his own experience of living in France.² The project, still unnamed, was announced at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012, where Farhadi and Mallet-Guy received the EU MEDIA Prize for projects in development.²

Budget and shooting. The film was budgeted at 8 million euros, and filming lasted 15 weeks, in a studio at Bry-sur-Marne where the interiors of Marie's house were built, as well as in Sevran and Paris.² Farhadi deliberately avoided a touristic view of Paris, placing the main home in the suburbs with the city appearing in the background.² Bérénice Bejo joined Tahar Rahim at the end of July, and rehearsals ran for two months from the beginning of August.² Marion Cotillard had originally been cast in the role eventually played by Bejo.⁸

Language. Farhadi does not speak French and worked through a translator, Arash, throughout preparation and shooting; Bejo described the translator as becoming Farhadi's voice on set.² The film's dialogue is in French and Persian.⁴

Reception and awards

The film premiered in Competition at the 66th Cannes Film Festival in May 2013 and also screened at Telluride and Toronto.⁴ It won the Best Actress award for Bejo and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, and was nominated for the Palme d'Or.³ In France it was released on 15 May 2013, alongside its Cannes presentation, and drew around one million admissions.⁵^•⁶

Awards season. The film received five César nominations for 2014: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing, and was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.³ The National Board of Review named it Best Foreign Language Film of 2013, and it was Iran's official submission for the 86th Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.³^•⁴ IMDb records 13 wins and 42 nominations overall.³

Critical response. Reviewers praised the ensemble performances and Farhadi's dramaturgy. Godfrey Cheshire, writing for RogerEbert.com, called it a brilliantly mounted drama about fracturing families and noted Farhadi's layered plotting and shifting perspectives among Ahmad, Marie, and Samir.⁷ Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times described it as part family melodrama and part intricate interpersonal puzzle, observing that because it is set in France rather than Iran it lacks the religious and political overlay of A Separation.⁹ Guy Lodge's Cannes review judged it unlikely to surpass A Separation in most critical estimations, while crediting Bejo with a performance of hostile, last-nerve vulnerability.¹⁰ In Iran, the film opened in Tehran cinemas and became the best-selling film within four days, though Iranian critics were divided and it did not repeat the reception of A Separation.¹¹

Place in Farhadi's career

The Past was Farhadi's sixth feature and followed A Separation, which had won Iran's first Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.⁷ Farhadi said the story was neither French nor Iranian but a human one, and that he had avoided defining characters by nationality; he also noted that the Iranian character, Ahmad, acts as a catalyst who pushes the others to say what had long remained unsaid.² The film was later followed by The Salesman, Farhadi's second film produced by Mallet-Guy, after a planned Spanish project was delayed.⁶

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026