As Time magazine tallies votes for its Person of the Year for 2012, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who won this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, is sitting at fourth place out of 100.

Voting will close today, and the latest results at the end of last night put the director of the acclaimed film A Separation at fourth place with 119,855 votes.

More than 85 percent of voters have selected Farhadi from a list that includes a wide spectrum of people, from politicians to sports personalities to artists.

You’ll find the names of Argentinian soccer star Lionel Messi, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Syrian President Beshar Assad, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan, American actors George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, British actor Daniel Craig, American champion swimmer Michael Phelps, American TV host Oprah Winfrey, British director Danny Boyle and U.S. director Martin Scorsese.

Farhadi will start shooting a new film in Paris in the fall.

Iranian authorities have given a cool reception to the international success of Farhadi’s film, and they cancelled an event by the Iranian film community, which has been embroiled in disputes with the government, that was planned to celebrate Farhadi’s success.

Time magazine has been choosing a Person of the Year since 1927, though the title was Man of the Year until 1999. Time has stressed that the Person of the Year is not necessarily a celebrated individual.

Source : Radio Zamaneh