The release of A Separation (2011) was a milestone for Asghar Farhadi: After winning a slew of awards, including Iran's first Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Farhadi was internationally celebrated as a new face in Iranian cinema. While Farhadi continues to establish himself as an auteur of suspenseful melodrama (his first international production, The Past, was released in 2013), little has been written in Western film criticism about the director's filmography, which dates back to the early 2000s. In Asghar Farhadi: Life and Cinema, Tina Hassannia traces Farhadi's origins as an Iranian scriptwriter and director and provides contextual analyses for each of his six feature films, which also include Dancing in the Dust, The Beautiful City, Fireworks Wednesday and About Elly. The book also include an exclusive, in-depth interview with the filmmaker about his work. In detailing Farhadi's cinematic influences and the history of the Iranian melodrama, Hassannia provides the first English introduction to this new Iranian master.
