FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Asghar Farhadi - About Elly 

One of Asghar Farhadi's guiding themes is to challenge sexual politics in contemporary Iran. Perhaps that is what makes his films so disturbing? But it is also what distinguishes him from the great directors of Iran who began their careers twenty years earlier. So you will find the role models of About Elly here with us in Europe. Do you still remember Roman Polanski's very first feature film? Or Michelangelo-Antonioni's "L'Avventura"? What these films had in common was that they closely observed the dynamics within a group. How does something like group guilt arise? Here it is a circle of friends from the Iranian middle class. They all come from Tehran. Together with their children they went to the sea. A weekend vacation. It was the lively Sepideh (Iran's biggest star Golshifteh Farahani) who invited Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti). No one in the group knows Elly any closer. She is the teacher of her children, that's it. Of course, Sepideh had something in mind and that was to set Elly up. Perhaps to the recently divorced Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini), who has just returned from a business trip from Germany? Elly and Ahmad even have a longer conversation with each other. But the story won't be that straightforward. It strikes a right angle. The group giggles, people talk about Elly's forthcoming wedding. Even Sepideh is involved and we feel uncomfortable. We - the audience - witness something unpleasant. All this seems to go beyond mere blasphemy. Elly leaves the room. There is a crisis and then Elly just disappears. Without a trace. Ellie is just gone. Now all the lies and secrets that exist beneath the surface come out. Elly's bizarre disappearance is said to have had repercussions... And we're already in the middle of a major psychogram!