Israeli, Iranian filmmakers participate together in pre-Oscar panel

LOS ANGELES (JTA) – The Israeli and Iranian filmmakers whose movies are vying against each other for an Oscar sat together on a panel discussion.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had invited the five directors vying for the Oscar in the best foreign-language film category to discuss their craft at a symposium.

In light of Tehran’s policy of no contact between its citizens and Israelis, there was some quiet concern that an incident might mar the occasion. Last week, an Iranian soccer team pulled out of a match with a Serbian team because the latter was coached by an Israeli, Avram Grant.

Before a full house at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theatre on Saturday, the directors faced the audience in a single row, flanking Mark Johnson, chair of the selection committee.

The directors were seated by the alphabetical order of their respective film titles: “Bullhead” by Belgium’s Michael Roskam; “Footnote” by Israel’s Joseph Cedar; “In Darkness” by Poland’s Agnieszka Holland; “Monsieur Lazhar” by Canada’s Philippe Falardeau; and “A Separation” by Iran’s Asghar Farhadi, who was accompanied by a translator.

So by chance, Israel’s Cedar sat next to the far left and Iran’s Farhadi in the last seat on the right. In response to a reporter’s question, Johnson said that he had not been approached by the Iranians requesting any special seating arrangement.

During the two-hour panel discussion, Cedar and Farhadi did not speak to each other directly, but joined their colleagues in chuckling at each other’s jokes and politely applauding their respective remarks.

The same applied when Holland discussed her film about a dozen Jews hiding in underground sewers during the Nazi occupation of Poland, a theme directly contradicting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s insistence that the Holocaust never happened.

All the panelists used hand-held microphones except for Cedar, whose stationery mike was fastened to the armrest of his chair, because of the Jewish Sabbath.

The symposium is always held on Saturday preceding the Sunday Academy Awards and Cedar, who is a Shabbat observer, walked two miles from his hotel to the theater.

In 2007, when Cedar’s war film “Beaufort” also was among the five finalists, he consulted his rabbi and was told that he could not use a mike during the symposium. As a result, only those in the first few rows could hear his remarks. This time Cedar consulted a different authority, who advised that the director could speak into a mike, as long as he did not actually hold it in his hand.