*Academy Award winner – Best Foreign Language Film
*Golden Globe nominee – Best Foreign Language Film
*Winner: Best Actor and Best Screenplay at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival
A gripping drama by writer-director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, The Past), The Salesman focuses on an Iranian couple whose life changes in an instant when their apartment begins to crumble around them.
As the film opens, the world is shaking. Finding themselves living in a building that is structurally unsound, Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) are forced to evacuate their home in the middle of the night and find another place to live. Through a mutual contact, they find a usable apartment that has been vacated by its previous tenant. But it is far from perfect. The previous tenant hasn’t entirely removed her things, leaving some of her possessions in a locked room. And an unfriendly visitor comes calling one night, resulting in an eruption of violence. As time unfolds under their new circumstances, their lives and their relationship destabilize. Meanwhile, the two are working things out on stage, performing as Willy and Linda Loman in an amateur production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. As the film progresses, their onstage roles begin to resonate with their fractured lives in beguiling ways. A work of slow-burning suspense and simmering domestic tension, Asghar Farhadi’s Salesman draws you in, turns the screws, and leaves you with a lot to hold onto.
(Iran, France / 2016 / Directed by Asghar Farhadi)
PG-13 / 125 mins.
