Director Did Not Attend The Ceremony In Protest Of President Trump's Travel Policies

The director of "The Salesman", which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, did not attend the ceremony last Sunday. Iranian director Asghar Farhadi stayed home because of President Trump's executive order temporarily banning travel from a handful of countries to allow for extreme vetting of people traveling from those countries before admitting them to the U.S.

Instead, Anousheh Ansari (pictured), who was the first Iranian to fly in space, stepped up on the stage to accept the award.

Forbes reports that, through Ansari, Farhadi said her absence was out of respect for "the people in my country and those of other nations whom have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S."

Ansari, now 50, became the first Iranian to fly in space when she spent $20 million of her own money for a seat on a Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station in 2006.

The remainder of the article, which you can read at the link below, is an interview with Ansari about her 2006 trip to ISS and its meaning to her.

(Wikipedia image)

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