News

Asghar Farhadi: 'Censorship in Iran is like the British weather' Iranian director Asghar Farhadi talks to David Jenkins about ‘A Separation’, a new film about divorce, pride and truth in Tehran

In the pantheon of movies about messy divorces, ‘Kramer vs Kramer’ has just suffered a potentially ruinous shot across the bow from a new Iranian film called ‘A Separation’ by writer-director Asghar Farhadi. The title of the film – which won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival – refers to the fraught marital breakdown between a liberal-minded bourgeois couple, Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami). But it could just as easily refer to the gulf between parents and children, between rich and poor and between people and their sense of social responsibility in times of discord.

Thirty-nine-year-old Farhadi says his films tend to grow out of random, disconnected moments that drift into his mind during solitary afternoons. ‘I had a vision of a man who had to bathe his elderly father. The father suffers from Alzheimer’s. His job is very tough.’ This ‘scene’ was the embryo for ‘A Separation’, and it’s one of a num... >>>