About Elly

About Elly (2009) is Asghar Farhadi's Iranian drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. A quiet seaside getaway curdles into dread, then disaster, when one of the guests vanishes without a word.

A group of old friends from Tehran rents a house on the Caspian coast for the weekend. Sepideh, played by Golshifteh Farahani, brings along Elly, a young kindergarten teacher, quietly hoping to set her up with Ahmad, recently divorced and visiting from Germany. For a while it reads like an easy holiday — kids underfoot, jokes, a shared dinner. Then Elly disappears from the beach, and one by one the friends begin to lie, first about small things, then about everything, to protect themselves.

Farhadi tightens the story like a slow knot, each evasion dragging the next one behind it. It's a clear-eyed look at Iran's middle class, its proprieties and its terror of being judged — made two years before his Oscar-winning A Separation. The film took the Silver Bear for direction at the Berlinale. Made for anyone who loves intelligent drama where tension builds without a single gunshot. Stream About Elly (2009) online on iFILM.