Audience members immersed themselves in Middle Eastern family struggles at a screening of “A Separation” on Monday.

“A Separation” is a 2011 Iranian film by director and screenwriter Asghar Farhadi. The film won an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012. The screening, hosted in Eggers Hall by the Middle Eastern Studies Program, lasted nearly two hours, but audience members did not seem to notice.

The film is about a middle-class couple going through a divorce. The wife wants to leave the country while the husband has to take care of his father, who has Alzheimer’s disease. A pregnant nanny comes to the family but had a miscarriage after she had conflicts with the husband.

The film is full of struggles: classes clashing, family problems and analyzing the subordinate position of women in society. Close-up shots, excellent editing, superb dialogue between characters and sophisticated acting tugged on the audiences’ heartstrings.

Professor Merril Silverstein, who specializes in family sociology and the sociology of aging, attended the screening. The film showed a different social setting from the American family. In Iran, there is a social expectation that children should take care of their parents. In comparison, American families might prefer nursing homes or other forms of help, Silverstein said.

The reason the wife in the film wanted to leave the country is not clear, Silverstein said, but the dissatisfaction about women’s rights in Iran may have contributed. Because of censorship and because filmmaker Farhadi was banned by the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in 2010, Farhadi is not allowed to state the reason.

“It is very touching,” Silverstein said. “It shows how family is very complicated, and sometimes, there is no good solution.”

Fatin Athirah Amani Mohd Nasir, a Malaysian senior international relations major, came to the event as a part of a political science class requirement and because of her large interest in Middle Eastern culture.

As a Muslim, Mohd Nasir wants to learn more about her religion in other countries. She said people might have stereotypes about different religions and see Muslims in a particular way. But because of her cultural background, she practices the religion in a different way.

Stephen Connors, a freshman newspaper and online journalism major who is also interested in different cultures, attended because of his interest in foreign films.

“It gets me a view of the world we don’t get if we just watch films in the English language,” Connors said. “More people should come to experience visions of other countries.”

Published on March 18, 2013 at 11:39 pm

Contact Ruth: jli64@syr.edu