Everybody Knows

What happens when you pair a Golden Globe-winning Iranian director who doesn’t speak Spanish with two actors who don’t speak Persian? Golden Globe and two-time Academy Award winner Asghar Farhadi faced just such an artistic challenge when he brought together husband and wife Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in the haunting thriller Everybody Knows, set in a small town in Spain. Having previously shot The Past in France and A Separation in Iran, Farhadi’s style of working with his actors is pushing beyond language to find the inner machinations of the characters, where they are from and what their feelings are.

The star of director Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows, Golden Globe nominee Penélope Cruz followed closely the five-year process that took the filmmaker to Spain, in an effort to understand the roots of the story he wanted to tell. HFPA journalist Gabriel Lerman got all the details.

In Toronto with director Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows, Javier Bardem talks to HFPA journalist Gabriel Lerman about the unique experience of shooting a film in Spain, spoken in Spanish, under the guidance of an Iranian filmmaker.