With A Separation (2011), director Asghar Farhadi made what was to become the Iranian cinema s greatest international success, a worldwide hit that garnered numerous high-profile awards culminating in Iran s first-ever Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar. The film seemed to position its creator as an artist ready to leap from Iran onto the world stage, a promise handsomely fulfilled in its French-made follow-up, The Past, another brilliantly mounted drama concerning fracturing families, hidden motives and the difficulties of attaining stability in a rapidly changing world.
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Previous Iranian directors to achieve international renown evidenced strong ties to their nation s culture, especially its traditions in poetry, philosophy, literature and cinema. Farhadi by contrast, who came out of the theater and has cited influences such as Tennessee Williams, seems more readily adaptable to cultures beyond his own. And while A Separation, which depicted a couple splitting u