About Elly
Short description
A group of university friends from Tehran spend a few days at a seaside house in the north of Iran. Sepideh has organized the trip to introduce Elly, her young daughter's kindergarten teacher, to Ahmad, who has returned from Germany after years abroad. The gathering begins in high spirits, but a moment of panic on the beach leaves one of the children nearly drowned, and Elly, who was meant to be watching the child, vanishes. As the friends search for her, disagreements grow about what happened and who is responsible, and it becomes clear that none of them knew much about Elly. Sepideh in particular holds back what she knows.
About Elly was directed by Asghar Farhadi, who also wrote the screenplay, following his earlier film Fireworks Wednesday and preceding A Separation, The Past, The Salesman, Everybody Knows, A Hero and Parallel Tales. Golshifteh Farahani plays Sepideh, with Shahab Hosseini as Ahmad, Payman Maadi, Merila Zarei, Ahmad Mehranfar and Mani Haghighi among the twenty-nine credited cast members.
The film was released in 2009 and runs 119 minutes. On TMDB it holds a rating of 7.5 out of 10 from 569 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 8.2 out of 10 from 72 reviews, indicating a stronger response from reviewers than from the wider audience.
What's left behind the scenes
- According to director and screenwriter Asghar Farhadi, the film was excluded from at least one festival program in Japan because Iran is depicted in it in a way that is quite different from how most foreigners, especially those from Western countries, perceive it.
- Iran officially submitted the film for the 2009 Academy Award in the 'Best Foreign Language Film' category.
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