Equally important is that the film avoids oversimplistic condemnations of the Iranian regime, showing that oppression can be propagated unconsciously, even by those who are at the bottom of society.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 23, 2024

It touches on a reality of life that transcends any political or cultural barrier while also offering some thought-provoking insight into the religious laws and social structure of that part of the world.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 19, 2022

A Separation stimulates discussion about how the characters behave and how we feel about their choices.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 21, 2022

A Separation is an educational and sympathetic inside look at the way things work in Iran...

| Mar 22, 2021

A Separation provides one of the few glimpses that Americans and others in the West will have into the reality of Iranian life.

| Feb 12, 2021

Rarely are family dramas as thematically or structurally complex as A Separation. Pair that with the fact that it is very well acted and intelligently photographed, and you have an extraordinary film.

| Nov 18, 2020

The beauty of A Separation, and what one can only hope will help sell it to American audiences, is the universality of its themes, messages and conflicts.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 1, 2020

A stressful watch but worthwhile look at 2 marriages in Iran

| Aug 12, 2020

For fans of the sort of world cinema that plunges you into the essence of life in another reality, A Separation is an intense, immersive dip into contemporary Iranian life.

| Jan 16, 2020

[T]he X Factor in A Separation lies with its cast, bringing the extraordinary out of the seemingly ordinary.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 10, 2019

Farhadi discovers simple yet deeply human truths - that the divides that so often separate us can seem so impossibly wide are never quite as far as we imagine.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 6, 2019

Cleverly, A Separation doesn't conspicuously proselytise about its socio-political import; it is largely concerned with matters of the family that to some degree are universal

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 15, 2019

The quiet, staggering power of "A Separation" is in the realization that navigating the politics of government or of family are tasks of equal scale and equally treacherous.

| Jan 8, 2019

Just as nuanced, but with a bigger emotional punch, is the rest of this Rashomon-like tale of right and wrong, life and death, actions and consequences, all of which reveal various particulars of life in Tehran.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 4, 2019

Writer/director Asghar Farhadi delivers a complex and honest portrayal of two families in modern-day Tehran. It is a challenging and heartbreaking film that deserves an audience.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 31, 2018

The complexity of the characters is wonderful; as a viewer you in one scene enraged at their actions then following a plot twist in the next scene you are wholeheartedly sympathizing with them.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 29, 2018

A Separation is a deeply empathetic movie. It feels for all of its characters even as they act in self-serving or self-deceiving ways.

| Aug 7, 2018

A Separation is a movie that keeps expanding, like one of those paper pellets that, when you drop it in water, blossoms into a flower.

| May 17, 2018

Simply exceptional. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 16, 2018

With "A Separation," Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has managed something increasingly difficult and unusual - pleasing audiences both at home and in the West.

| Mar 3, 2018