Asghar Farhadi

A kindergarten teacher vanishes from a seaside picnic in About Elly, and the friends who invited her spend the rest of the film deciding what to tell her family. Farhadi starts from a fact somebody is holding back and lets the pressure out through argument: a couple in A Separation choosing between a father with Alzheimer's and a better country for their daughter, a debtor on two days' leave from prison in A Hero, trying to talk his creditor into dropping the complaint. Scenes run ten minutes at a stretch in hallways and kitchens where nobody can speak privately, and sympathy crosses the room mid-conversation. You come out without a verdict and still arguing the case.

Signature

• One concealed incident driving the whole structure.
• Long argument scenes where sympathy migrates mid-conversation.
• Apartments, doorways and stairwells with nowhere private to talk.
• Endings that withhold the verdict and hand it over.