Programmer's Note

Transcending cultural and religious barriers to present a fascinating portrait of contemporary Iran, A Separation is Asghar Farhadi’s Divorce, Persian Style. It won the Golden Bear for Best Film at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

In any film where a character has to call a religious hotline to ask if her professional duties are consistent with her beliefs, you know the devil is in the details. And so it is that Farhadi delivers his best work to date, a maze of narrative intrigue and complex emotion in which everyone is both innocent and guilty, depending on where you’re standing.

Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) are well-behaved middle-class Iranian citizens. They fight quietly, hold decent jobs and prefer to resolve their domestic differences in court. But they only comport themselves with such courtesy because they might be a little too civilized to let their real feelings show. After Nader refuses to emigrate from Iran (a move that would provide a brighter future for their offspring), Simin files for divorce. When she retreats to her mother’s house, Nader hires Razieh (Sareh Bayat), a deeply religious and secretly pregnant young woman, to look after his father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. But once Razieh’s condition starts getting in the way of her job, Nader allows the worst aspects of his repressed nature to emerge — resulting in a Razieh’s most uncivilized termination and even more courtroom headaches.

As Nader’s entire family is drawn into an unprecedented feud, Farhadi continues his devilishly clever turning of narrative tables, selectively revealing new details and forcing the viewer to continuously reassess each character.