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Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi with his 2012 award
Last in a line? … Asghar Farhadi, Iranian winner of the best foreign language film award 2012 for A Separation. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images
Last in a line? … Asghar Farhadi, Iranian winner of the best foreign language film award 2012 for A Separation. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Iran to boycott 2013 Oscars over Innocence of Muslims

This article is more than 11 years old
Culture minister Mohammad Hosseini also called for a wider boycott of next year's Academy awards by Muslim nations

Iran's film-making community will not be represented at this year's Oscars after the government announced a boycott over the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims.

The move is something of a turnaround because the country's Oscar entry for 2013, Reza Mirkarimi's comedy A Cube of Sugar, was announced on Monday. Culture minister Mohammad Hosseini also called for a wider boycott of next year's Academy Awards by Muslim nations.

"I am officially announcing that in reaction to the intolerable insult to the Great Prophet of Islam we will refrain from taking part in this year's Oscars and we ask other Islamic nations to show their protest like this," the minister told the ISNA state news agency. "This film was made in America and the Oscars are held there, and so far no official stance by the nation that made this film has been taken."

Oscars organisers in Los Angeles said they had not heard from the Iranian Oscars committee, which last year submitted the winner of the prize for best foreign language film, Asghar Farhadi's A Separation. The drama about a middle-class couple preparing for a painful divorce fostered by different attitudes to the prevailing political conditions was also nominated for the best original screenplay award.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, condemned Innocence of Muslims during an appearance on the US Piers Morgan TV show on Monday.

"Offending the Holy Prophet is quite ugly," he said, through a translator. "This has very little or nothing to do with freedom and freedom of speech. This is the weakness of and the abuse of freedom, and in many places it is a crime. It shouldn't take place, and I do hope the day will come in which politicians will not seek to offend those whom others hold holy. We also believe that this must also be resolved in a humane atmosphere, in a participatory environment, and we do not like anyone losing their lives or being killed for any reason, anywhere in the world."

Iran has seen a number of peaceful protests against Innocence of Muslims.

Tehran-born Mirkarimi has previously won awards at the Cannes, Moscow and Toyko film festivals. A Cube of Sugar, the story of a family that reunites for the wedding of its youngest female member, is his sixth film.

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