Iranian drama The Salesman just won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but its director Asghar Farhadi was not present to receive the award. In the wake of Donald Trump's now-stalled travel ban, which restricted immigration from seven countries including Farhadi's home country of Iran, the director announced that he would not attend the Oscars ceremony, even if an exception were made for him.

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"The possibility of [my presence at the ceremony] is being accompanied by ifs and buts which are in no way acceptable to me," Farhadi told The New York Times, "even if exceptions were to be made for my trip." He decried Trump's executive order for perpetuating a hardline "us and them mentality" in order to "inflict fear" on the people of America.

Farhadi has been Oscar-nominated before, for writing 2011's A Separation. He was represented at the ceremony tonight by two prominent Iranian-Americans—engineer Anousheh Ansari, known as the first female space tourist, and Firouz Naderi, a former director at NASA.

Farhadi submitted a statement in lieu of an acceptance speech, which you can read in full below:

It's a great honor to be receiving this valuable award for the second time. I would like to thank the members of the Academy, my crew in Iran, my producer, Amazon, and my fellow nominees.

I'm sorry I'm not with you tonight. My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations whom have been disrespected by the inhuman law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S. Dividing the world into the U.S. and our enemies categories creates fear. A deceitful justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which have themselves been victims of aggression.

Filmmakers can turn their cameras to capture shared human qualities and break stereotypes of various nationalities and religions. They create empathy between us and others. An empathy which we need today more than ever. Thank you on behalf of Mr. Farhadi. Thank you.

Emma Dibdin Contributor Emma Dibdin writes about television, movies, and podcasts, with coverage including opinion essays, news posts, episodic reviews and in-depth interviews with creatives.

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