The film is the story of the break-up of the marriage of a middle-class couple who struggle with how to handle that and the future of their only child.
“Nader and Simin” won the Golden Bear for best film of the year at the Berlin Film Festival and its entire cast won the Silver Bears for best actress and best actor. The film has received a number of other accolades around the world.
The film is being released in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics on December 30. That timing will make it eligible for consideration in other Oscar categories such as Best Director and Best Screenplay.
The film was released in France in June and is still showing in more than 100 French movie houses, Agence France Presse reported.
Amir Esfandiari, chairman of the Selection Committee, said, “The film was chosen from among 60 films that were screened between October 1, 2010, and September 30, 2011.”
About 50 non-English language films are submitted each year by that many countries to the US Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. The films are viewed by a group of Hollywood entertainment industry members who nominate five of those films in late January. The actual winner will be announced February 26, 2012.
Over the decades, no Iranian film has yet won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. One has been nominated. That was Majid Majidi’s “Children of Heaven” in 1998. Four Majidi films have been submitted to the Oscar committee, more than for any other Iranian director. Two films by Bahman Qobadi and, with this year’s selection, two films by Asghar Farhadi have been selected.
Iran first submitted a film for the Oscar in 1978 and 1979. With the revolution, the Islamic Republic halted submissions until 1995 when they resumed.
A board of nine industry figures named by the Farabi Cinematic Foundation, part of the Culture Ministry, chooses the Iranian submission each year.