About Elly · reception & legacy
2009 · Asghar Farhadi
How About Elly has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A Silver Bear winner at Berlin in 2009, it then sat in US distribution limbo for six years and only got a proper American release in 2015 — riding the wave of A Separation's Oscar — where critics greeted it as a belated masterpiece.
What's debated
The evergreen Farhadi-heads debate: is About Elly actually better than A Separation?
Its footprint
It's the ultimate word-of-mouth recommendation — the film critics kept comparing to Antonioni's L'Avventura, and the one people press on friends who think they've already seen Farhadi's best.
Where it stands
A canon climber and Letterboxd darling — the 'deep cut' Farhadi pick that's no longer really a deep cut.
★ Did you know? It won Farhadi the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2009 Berlinale and Best Narrative Feature at Tribeca the same year — yet didn't open theatrically in the US until 2015.