Nader and Simin: A Separation by Asghar Farhadi is the Iran-made candidate for Best Foreign Picture at the Academy Awards. Not only is it a superb film with nary a wasted shot, but actors Leila Hatami and Peyman Maadi (they won the Best Actor awards at the last Berlin Film Festival) give three-dimensional, wholly believable performances as the two sides of an acrimonious couple going through a sloppy divorce.

Iranian cinema is about to get a whole lot more interesting with Asghar Farhadi’s “Nader & Simin: A separation,” which in theory should be shown in limited release in about two months in the U.S.

Shot in semi-clandestinity in Tehran, it tells the tale of a couple, on the verge of separation, who are ripped apart by a parent’s Alzheimer’s disease and a caretaker hired to help him make it through the debilitating disease. Class differences and the slow disintegration of the couple’s life seem to be the order of the day in this narrative.