A Separation
Academy Award × 1
Rent/Purchase
A married couple are faced with a difficult decision – to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.
What critics thought
A Separation earned near-unanimous acclaim, with critics treating it as one of the great films of its decade — a legal and domestic thriller that doubles as a finely observed portrait of class, gender, and religious division in contemporary Iran. The strength of the ensemble acting and Farhadi's ability to keep moral judgment perpetually suspended were singled out repeatedly, while the film's domestic Iranian reception was not without political friction, with regime-aligned critics objecting to what they saw as an unflattering self-portrait for Western consumption.
“Showing a control of investigative pacing that recalls classic Hitchcock and a feel for ethical nuance that is all his own, Farhadi has hit upon a story that is not only about men and women, children and parents, justice and religion in today's Iran, but that raises complex and globally relevant questions of responsibility, of the subjectivity and contingency of "telling the truth", and of how thin the line can be between inflexibility and pride – especially of the male variety – and selfishness and tyranny.”
Lee Marshall·Screen Daily
“Tense and narratively complex, formally dense and morally challenging... The provocative plot casts a revealing light on contempo Iranian society, taking on issues of gender, class, justice and honor as a secular middle-class family in the midst of upheaval winds up in conflict with an impoverished religious one.”
Alissa Simon·Variety
“You cannot watch the film without feeling kinship with the characters and admitting their decency as well as their mistakes. The American films made this year that deal with the internal detail and difficulty of family life – like The Descendants — are airy, pretty and affluent compared with A Separation.”
David Thomson·The New Republic
“Apparently simple on a narrative level yet morally, psychologically and socially complex, it succeeds in bringing Iranian society into focus for in a way few other films have done.”
Deborah Young·The Hollywood Reporter
Genres
Drama
Cast & Crew
DirectorAsghar Farhadi
StarringPayman Maadi, Leila Hatami, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat, Sarina Farhadi
ComposerSattar Oraki
A Separation
Academy Award × 1
A married couple are faced with a difficult decision – to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.
What critics thought
A Separation earned near-unanimous acclaim, with critics treating it as one of the great films of its decade — a legal and domestic thriller that doubles as a finely observed portrait of class, gender, and religious division in contemporary Iran. The strength of the ensemble acting and Farhadi's ability to keep moral judgment perpetually suspended were singled out repeatedly, while the film's domestic Iranian reception was not without political friction, with regime-aligned critics objecting to what they saw as an unflattering self-portrait for Western consumption.
“Showing a control of investigative pacing that recalls classic Hitchcock and a feel for ethical nuance that is all his own, Farhadi has hit upon a story that is not only about men and women, children and parents, justice and religion in today's Iran, but that raises complex and globally relevant questions of responsibility, of the subjectivity and contingency of "telling the truth", and of how thin the line can be between inflexibility and pride – especially of the male variety – and selfishness and tyranny.”
Lee Marshall·Screen Daily
“Tense and narratively complex, formally dense and morally challenging... The provocative plot casts a revealing light on contempo Iranian society, taking on issues of gender, class, justice and honor as a secular middle-class family in the midst of upheaval winds up in conflict with an impoverished religious one.”
Alissa Simon·Variety
“You cannot watch the film without feeling kinship with the characters and admitting their decency as well as their mistakes. The American films made this year that deal with the internal detail and difficulty of family life – like The Descendants — are airy, pretty and affluent compared with A Separation.”
David Thomson·The New Republic
“Apparently simple on a narrative level yet morally, psychologically and socially complex, it succeeds in bringing Iranian society into focus for in a way few other films have done.”
Deborah Young·The Hollywood Reporter
Genres
Drama
Cast & Crew
DirectorAsghar Farhadi
StarringPayman Maadi, Leila Hatami, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat, Sarina Farhadi
ComposerSattar Oraki
Rent/Purchase