Sadiq Khan is host­ing a free pub­lic screen­ing of The Salesman

The May­or of Lon­don, Sadiq Khan, has announced that he will host a free pub­lic pre­view screen­ing of The Sales­man, Iran’s entry for the Best For­eign Lan­guage Oscar, on Sun­day 26 Feb­ru­ary – the same night as the 89^th Acad­e­my Awards ceremony.

The film tells the sto­ry of a young Iran­ian cou­ple deal­ing with the fall­out of a vio­lent inci­dent in their home. The screen­ing will take place in Trafal­gar Square where an open air cin­e­ma ready to accom­mo­date up to 10,000 peo­ple is being built. It will be accom­pa­nied a spe­cial video intro­duc­tion by the film’s direc­tor, Asghar Farhadi.

Despite being up for the Acad­e­my Award, Farha­di, who was pre­vi­ous­ly nom­i­nat­ed in 2012 for A Sep­a­ra­tion, has said he will not be attend­ing the cer­e­mo­ny in protest at Pres­i­dent Trump’s exec­u­tive order pre­vent­ing peo­ple from var­i­ous major­i­ty mus­lim coun­tries from trav­el­ling into the States. The trav­el ban has been blocked by the US courts, but Farha­di will stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those affect­ed even if spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion is granted.

In response to Khan’s screen­ing, the direc­tor has said, ​“The gath­er­ing of the audi­ence around The Sales­man in this famous Lon­don square is sym­bol­ic of uni­ty against the divi­sion and sep­a­ra­tion of people.”

The event is being held as part of the #Lon­don­IsOpen cam­paign, which cel­e­brates the city’s diver­si­ty and uni­ty. As well as The Sales­man the pro­gramme includes speech­es from key film indus­try fig­ures includ­ing Mike Leigh, as co-organ­ised by Khan, actor Lily Cole, pro­duc­er Kate Wil­son and film­mak­er Mike Donne, and spon­sored by Cur­zon. The Sales­man is released across the UK on 17 March and you can read our first-look review here.