The Dryden will screen Darbareye Elly (About Elly, Asghar Farhadi, Iran 2009, 118 min., DCP, Persian w/subtitles).

From the acclaimed director of A Separation (Oscar, Best Foreign Language Film) and The Past comes this mystery-thriller, set among a group of Iranian friends visiting the Caspian Sea for a holiday weekend. As with Farhadi's better known films, About Elly concerns the affluent, well educated, cultured, and only marginally religious members of Iran's upper-middle-class. "Yet as in A Separation, it's not hard to detect a subtext: a critique of the lies and evasions that permeate Iranian society." (Philip Kemp, Sight and Sound) Elly, invited as a possible romantic interest for one of the newly single men, disappears from the group without a trace. The festive atmosphere quickly turns frantic as friends accuse one another. Plot-wise, Farhadi's drama has been compared to Antonioni's L'avventura; but the film is less concerned with Elly's disappearance than with exploring the intricate mechanisms of deceit, brutality, and betrayal which come into play when ordinary circumstances take a tragic turn.

[source: George Eastman Museum website, 2016-Jan-25]