Director: Asghar Farhadi

Stars: Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Sahar Goldust, Sadre Orafaiy

Iranian writer-director Asghar 'The Separation' Farhadi's latest is another richly complex and quietly engrossing moral fable in which a small deception snowballs into a full-blown social media-enabled crisis. Amiable, soft spoken sign maker Rahim (Jadidi) has been imprisoned for an unpaid debt to his former brother-in-law. On temporary two-day leave, when he is visiting his new girlfriend Farkondeh (Goldust), an opportunity presents itself when she finds a lost bag containing gold coins on the bus. Rather than using the coins to pay off his debt (they don’t quite cover it anyway) Rahim decides to hand the coins back. He becomes a media sensation, appearing on day-time TV, and finds himself the toast of his neighbourhood. Then questions are raised about Rahim’s seeming altruism. The script is a little more complicated and far-fetched than the director’s usual parable-like tales, but it’s quietly gripping watching Farhadi tighten the screw on his protagonist, in what is not only a perceptive look at the capricious nature of social media and celebrity, but an enquiry into the nature of storytelling itself.

David Willoughby

Follow David on @DWill_Crackfilm