Iranian director Asghar Farhadi said he had conceived of much of the story for The Salesman years before production, but did not feel there was enough to make a film until he decided his protagonists should be stage actors [REF].
Looking for a play within the film, Farhadi researched the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Henrik Ibsen before finding Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, which he described as "a gift for me" [REF].