Winner of the Berlinale Golden Bear and Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, Asghar Farhadi’s Jodāyi-e Nāder az Simin breathed new life into Iranian cinema. In fact, it was perhaps one of the last major films to be made within the strict regulations and “red lines” of Iranian film industry – where official permission is required at every stage, from scriptwriting to exhibition – that still managed to present a deeply coherent and nuanced personal vision of Iranian society. Nader and Simin, a middle-class couple in Tehran, are on the verge of divorce. Simin wants to emigrate to Australia, while Nader insists on staying in Iran to care for his father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. Their 10-year-old daughter, Termeh, must decide whom to stay with. Matters become more complicated when Nader is accused of causing bodily harm to a housekeeper he has hired to help in his wife’s absence. From his earliest works, Farhadi has drawn on two major traditions in Iranian cinema: the socially conscious realist melodramas of the 1990s and the gritty street films of the 1970s. He infuses the former with Hitchcockian suspense and sharp craftsmanship, while stripping the latter of its overly stylized modernist excesses and all-male milieu. In Jodāyi-e Nāder az Simin, he explores his recurring themes: the ripple effect of a seemingly minor lie, which snowballs into an emotional avalanche engulfing everyone involved. The film portrays a society fractured by class divisions and mutual distrust – of both individuals and institutions – where concealment becomes a means of survival. The violence imposed by dysfunctional social institutions – here represented by the judiciary and outdated family court laws – morphs into emotional violence that individuals unleash upon each other. Farhadi employs a remarkable mise-en-scène which, like his characters, alternates between revealing and concealing, sharing and withholding. Essential cinema!

Ehsan Khoshbakht