A couple, Nader and Simin, have opposite ideas about living abroad but the same opinions about divorce.
Impressively shot and acted, A Separation refuses to judge its characters: everyone here has their reasons.
A Separation is a stand-out work, skilfully crafted, intelligent and considered, it will play on your mind long after the credits roll.
Powerful art cinema that challenges political and social unity in Iran.
A bit of a slog, although fresh and even lyric in moments.
The story would barely fill a few lines on a page but the strong characters, and the heady pace, make for great drama. Part courtroom tale, part a political portrait of Iran today, A Separation is a wholly involving watch.
Farhadi, who wrote the screenplay, keeps us hooked right until a supremely well-handled close.
A movie you’ll muse upon for new shades of meaning.
With great power and subtlety, Farhadi transforms this ugly quarrel into a contemporary tragedy.
Here is a brooding and rather brilliant drama about conscience and the law that deserves the widest possible audience.
Truly, you won't see a more absorbing film all year.
The iniquities of contemporary Iran are essayed in this absorbing, award-winning marital drama about the ways in which tiny events can have cataclysmic consequences.
The acting is terrific across the board, with the cast maintaining varying degrees of harassed distress, as all the characters hustle to keep their own lives in order.
The film develops into a complex moral dilemma that pitches religion against economics, one that brilliantly, and with creeping tension, encapsulates the tussles and fissures in Iranian society.
A Separation can't be divorced from Iranian politics
Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Wednesday April 18, 2012. 6.00pm. More info: www.filmhousecinema.com
General release. Check local listings for show times.