The Salesman

The Salesman (2016), Asghar Farhadi's Iranian drama, is available to watch online on iFILM. Emad and Rana, a young Tehran couple, are rehearsing Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on stage when cracks in their building force them into a new apartment overnight. Nobody warns them much about the woman who lived there before.

One evening Rana buzzes the door open, expecting her husband. What follows is a neighbour's shout, blood on the stairs, and a silence that pushes the marriage apart faster than any fight could. Emad sets out to track down the intruder himself; Rana just wants the whole thing buried. Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti play two people who love each other slowly drifting under the weight of shame and wounded pride.

Farhadi builds his tension out of ordinary rooms, where a held glance does more than any threat, and the Miller play keeps echoing the couple's private wreckage. The film took Iran its second foreign-language Oscar, while Hosseini left Cannes with the best actor prize. If A Separation stayed with you, this hits the same nerve. Stream The Salesman (2016) online on iFILM.