Iran Boycotts 2013 Oscars

By JTA September 27, 2012

Iran will not submit a movie for the 2013 Oscars, in protest of an anti-Muslim video.

Iran’s culture minister on Tuesday said his country would boycott the next Academy Awards because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had failed to protest the film, which mocks the Prophet Muhammad. The academy organizes the award ceremony in April.

“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,” said Mohammad Hosseini, the official ISNA state news agency reported. “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.”

The deadline for submissions is Oct. 1. Iran had planned to submit “A Cube of Sugar,” a dramatic comedy by Reza Mirkarimi about a wedding that turns into a funeral, according to The New York Times.

Iran won the 2012 Oscar for best foreign language film for “A Separation” by Asghar Farhadi. Among the entries it beat out was Israel’s “Footnote” by Joseph Cedars.

Last week, The Israeli Academy of Film and Television chose “Fill the Void” as Film of the Year at the Ophir Awards, Israel’s national film awards, making it the Israeli nomination for the foreign language Oscar. The film is about a young haredi Orthodox woman from Tel Aviv who is engaged to be married but must decide whether to marry her brother-in-law when her sister dies in childbirth.

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