Darbareye Elly

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Year: 2009

Country: Iran

Running time: 116 mins

Censor Rating: PG - violence, coarse language

Producers: Asghar Farhadi, Mahmoud Razavi

Photography: Hossein Jafarian

Editor: Hayedeh Safiyari

Music: Andrea Bauer

With: Golshifteh Farahani, Taraneh Alidoosti, Shahab Hosseini, Merila Zarei, Mani Haghighi, Peyman Moadi, Rana Azadivar, Ahmad Mehranfar, Saber Abar

In Farsi with English subtitles

Festivals: Berlin, Fajr, Tribeca, London 2009

"About Elly is the 2009 Iranian film by Iran's Asghar Farhadi which he made before winning the Best Foreign Language Oscar with A Separation which happens to be his  fourth film. The film is about the relationships between some middle class families in Iran. Fact-fully being four years old, it is as fresh as paint: paint that hasn't flaked or faded, paint that daubs a subtly encrypted anti-totalitarian message in the 'simple' fresco of its tragic tale. 

A brief about the movie 

A woman who was assumed to have drowned, during a weekend trip to the Caspian while her friends though soon discovered to be barely that roam the beach, bonding in their distress, wavering between hope and hopelessness where the chatter of panic trying to organise itself. The body is bound to wash up, some say. But is there a body? The virtues that glowed with a scary wattage in A Separation that glowing social fable mixed with a mordant jostle of contrasting psyches are softer here as told by Nigel Andrews, Financial Times

Farhadi won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 59th Berlin Film Festival for the film. The film was also nominated for 10 awards at the 27th Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran where Farhadi won the Crystal Symorgh for best directing. About Elly was Iran's official submission for the competition in Foreign Film section at the 82nd Academy Awards. It competed against films such as Bist, Tardid, Bipooli for Iran's submission in the Academy Awards.

Note: Adaptation from world movies.

(AW:Samrat Biswas)