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A Separation Synopsis


This film is in Persian with English subtitles

This Iranian masterwork by director Asghar Farhadi was the first runner up for the coveted Audience Award at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. This came just after its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival where it was the first film ever to win three major prizes. Suffice it to say, this is the story of a separation between a wife who desires a better life for her daughter and a husband who cannot leave the side of his ill father. The consequences of this separation unfold with increasingly serious dramatic tensions. We strongly recommended that you do not view the trailer.

Click here to view an introduction by director Asghar Farhadi given before a screening at USC that was very similar to the presentation he gave at the Toronto International Film Festival.

A Separation is currently a ranking of 75 of the top 250 films of all-time on IMDB.COM. That is the top ranking of any 2011 film. Rotten Tomatoes have given it a 99% fresh rating whie Metacritic.com ranks it at 95%




Running Time
Rating
120 minutes
14-A
Release to DVD: T.B.A.






Awards

Click on each image to see a larger picture.



Academy Awards Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film

Academy Awards Nomination: Best Original Screenplay (Asghar Farhadi)

BAFTA Nomination: Best Film not in the English Language

Berlin International Film Festival Winner: Golden Berlin Bear

Berlin International Film Festival Winner: Silver Berlin Bear

Berlin International Film Festival Winner: Ecumenical Jury Prize

Berlin International Film Festival Winner: Reader Jury of the Berliner Prize

British Independent Film Awards Winner: Best Foreign Independent Film

Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards: Best Foreign Language Film

Chicago Film Critics Winner: Best Foreign Language Film

Chicago Film Critics Nomination: Best Original Screenplay

Golden Globes Winner: Best Foreign Language Film

London Film Circle Critics Awards Winner: Foreign Language Film

London Film Circle Critics Awards Winner: Best Screenplay

London Film Circle Critics Awards Winner: Best Actress (Sareh Bayat)

London Film Circle Critics Awards Nomination: Best Film

London Film Circle Critics Awards Nomination: Best Director

National Board of Review Winner: Best Foreign Language Film

New York Film Critics Circle Awards Winner: Best Foreign Language Film

Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards Winner: Best Foreign Language Film



The Critics Comment






Boston Globe/Wesley Morris
This is a trenchant emotional thriller that you watch in dread, awe, and amazing aggravation. It's entirely predicated upon the outcome of bad decisions - and it is not a comedy. The situation that unfolds approaches the absurdity of farce but denies the relief and release of humor. It's a tragic farce. No option or choice is to be envied.

Chicago Tribune/Michael Phillips
The film is a singular achievement, a piece of realist cinema with the pull of a suspense thriller.

Chicago Reader/J.R. Jones
The movie is hugely compelling on a moral and emotional level - I was completely hooked - yet it also revealed to me in numerous small and concrete ways what it's like to live in a contemporary theocracy.

Entertainment Weekly/Owen Gleiberman
Farhadi is no mere formalist. His film is a spiritual investigation into the rise of women and the descent of male privilege in Iran, and a look at the toll that has taken. In a movie of flawless acting, it is Moadi - terse, proud, angry, haunted - who shows us that rare thing: a soul in transition.

Time/Richard Corliss
However ripe A Separation might seem for being adapted into a smart American film, Hollywood shouldn't bother. Farhadi's movie is just about perfect as it is.

NPR/Bob Mondello
A film that captures the drama and suspense of real life as urgently as any picture released this year.

Los Angeles Times/Kenneth Turan
A Separation is totally foreign and achingly familiar. It's a thrilling domestic drama that offers acute insights into human motivations and behavior as well as a compelling look at what goes on behind a particular curtain that almost never gets raised.

U.S.A. Today/Claudia Puig
Sophisticated and universal yet deeply intimate, A Separation is an exquisitely conceived family drama that has the coiled power of a top-notch thriller.

A.V. Club/Scott Tobias
Beyond the impeccable performances and direction, it's foremost an exceptional piece of screenwriting, so finely wrought that the drama seems guided by an invisible hand.

Rolling Stone/Peter Travers
A Separation is a landmark film. No way will you be able to get it out of your head.

N.Y. Times/A.O Scott
It is a rigorously honest movie about the difficulties of being honest, a film that tries to be truthful about the slipperiness of truth.





Related Links




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