Asghar Farhadi
Asghar Farhadi (born 1972) is an Iranian filmmaker whose intricately constructed moral dramas have made him one of the most internationally celebrated directors of his generation. Born in Isfahan, he studied drama at the University of Tehran and earned a master's in theatre direction at Tarbiat Modares University, writing radio plays and directing television before turning to features in 2003 with Dancing in the Dust. About Elly (2009) won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival, and A Separation (2011) — a story of a middle-class couple's divorce that draws a working-class religious family into a moral and legal crisis — won the Golden Bear and became the first Iranian film to take the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He won that Oscar a second time for The Salesman (2016) and was named to the Time 100 list in 2012.