A Separation's Asghar Farhadi: 'We need the audience to think'

Global hit ... Asghar Farhadi with his Golden Bear prize awarded for A Separation at the Berlin film festival earlier this year. Photograph: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

In a country where lawyers are jailed for defending their clients (such as Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has got 11 years), photographers are arrested for taking photographs (such as Maryam Majd, still missing) and film-makers are sentenced to lengthy terms for making films (such as Jafar Panahi), Asghar Farhadi has proved able to make good films – and even obtain the government approval as well as international admiration after winning the Golden Bear at this year's Berlin film festival for A Separation.

A SeparationProduction year: 2011Countries: Iran, Rest of the world Cert (UK): PGRuntime: 122 minsDirectors: Asghar Farhadi, Asghar FarhadiCast: Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Sareh Bayat, Sarina FarhadiMore on this film

A Separation follows the story of Simin (Leila Hatami), who is seeking to leave her husband, Nader, because she wants to leave Iran for a better life. Nader, a traditionalist, wants to remain and care for his ill father. When Simin goes back to her parents, Nader hires a maid, Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to take care of the housework – this results in a cross-class clash after an incident that takes both families to a sharia court.

A Separation is also a bigger picture of the modern Iran with all its complexities and contradictions. Filmed in the aftermath of Iran's 2009 disputed election, which left dozens of Iranians dead and hundreds injured and imprisoned for protesting at what they called a "stolen" vote, the film is a unique insight into Iranian society that, at the time, was invisible because of media censorship.

Farhadi, who looks older than his 39 years, with his sparse hair and goatee, says that his film-making choices were not entirely governed by imposed limitations. "Don't be mistaken, it's not because of the restrictions that I have chosen this style. There is no privilege in restriction. In other words, I disagree with people who say restriction makes you more creative. I think that's a misleading slogan. I might have been more creative without them than with them."

How would it look like if it were to be made in a free society? "I would have had the same narrative, regardless of the atmosphere and the restrictions. This kind of film allows the audience to discover by himself/herself – I see that as a modern art; an art in which the artist doesn't look at its audience from a superior level and it does not impose its viewpoint on the viewer."

But Farhadi does accept that the society he has lived in has influenced him. The role of religion, the confrontation of tradition and modernity, the manipulation of lives by the authorities, and, most importantly, a sense of abnormal stress and frustration in Iran's everyday life are apparent in the film's bigger picture. He says, though, that A Separation "is attempting to give an honest picture of the situation of only a part of Iran's society today and not the whole of it".

As well as the confrontations between the characters, there is, according to Farhadi, another level: "self-confrontation". "The bigger confrontation is the one an individual has with itself. When we talk about self-confrontations, we are speaking about moral issues rather than social issues."

Despite everything, Farhadi still ran into trouble. Official permission for A Separation's production was briefly removed in 2010, after Farhadi's remarks in support of Panahi at the Iran Cinema Celebration. "I think that was a very honest wish and [the authorities'] behaviour was very strange," Farhadi says. After days of negotiations and support from other film-makers, he was told he could proceed with his film.

"More than anything else, I think today's world need more questions than answers," he says. In his films, Farhadi says he wants to offer his viewer questions. "I'm not hiding the answers away from my viewers, I simply don't know them.

"If you give an answer to your viewer, your film will simply finish in the movie theatre. But when you pose questions, your film actually begins after people watch it. In fact, your film will continue inside the viewer."

"The important thing is to think and give the viewer the opportunity to think. In Iran, more than anything else at the moment we need the audience to think."

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