Quartile rating: 8.5/10 · 1 rating
A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.
A Separation is a masterwork of moral complexity — its plot unfolds with the precision of a thriller while remaining deeply human, layering class, marriage, faith, and justice into an intricately constructed web of competing truths. The acting is uniformly exceptional, with every performer delivering naturalistic, emotionally devastating work that feels entirely unperformed. Farhadi's direction is distinctive and unmistakable: his systematic dismantling of certainty and his refusal of easy sympathy make this a singular cinematic voice, earning high Novelty not through gimmick but through a perfected, one-of-a-kind moral architecture. The ending — a child forced to choose between her parents, the camera holding on her anguished face as the couple wait in separate rooms — is quietly shattering and among the finest in contemporary cinema. Cinematography, while clean and purposeful, is the one category that does not reach the same heights; Farhadi's handheld realism is effective but functional rather than visually inventive, appropriately held back relative to the film's other extraordinary qualities.