--- title: "The Salesman" year: 2016 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-salesman" fi1m_score: 72 critics_score: 74 critics_reviews: 23 published: "2026-09-17T12:42:03.598994+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T12:42:03.881774+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Salesman (2016) Directed by Asghar Farhadi · 2h 05m · MPA PG-13 · Drama, Thriller **Fi1m score: 72** · Critics 74 from 23 reviews *In a sentence:* Death of a Salesman, performed nightly by a man too angry to notice he is in it > Asghar Farhadi’s Tehran drama about a couple, an intrusion and a stranger’s pickup truck grips hard for an hour and a half, then wants us to notice how closely it resembles the play its actors are performing. Worth your evening; not his best. ## Synopsis Tehran. Emad Etesami (Shahab Hosseini) teaches literature at a boys’ school and acts by night, with his wife Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), in an amateur production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. One night their block of flats shifts on its foundations as a digger works next door; cracks run down the walls, windows burst, and the residents are turned out onto the street. Babak (Babak Karimi), a fellow cast member, offers them a flat he owns. The previous tenant has left her belongings behind a locked door and a child’s drawings on the wall, and the neighbours will not say much about her. A few nights later Rana, expecting Emad, buzzes the street door open and steps into the shower. Someone else comes up the stairs. ## Review Asghar Farhadi’s films begin with something small and domestic, a divorce petition in [*A Separation*](https://film.one/film/a-separation), and keep digging until nobody in them is standing on solid ground. *The Salesman* starts with the ground itself. A Tehran block of flats cracks in the night because of a digger next door, and Emad Etesami (Shahab Hosseini) and his wife Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), both actors in an amateur production of Arthur Miller’s *Death of a Salesman*, have to find somewhere else to live. For ninety minutes this is as tight as anything he has made. Then he starts pointing at the play, and the film gets worse the harder he points. Hossein Jafarian opens on an empty stage set, the Loman bedroom with its brass bed and neon sign, lights coming up on nobody. Then he is in a stairwell with a handheld camera while a building empties, a man carrying his grown son on his back. Hayedeh Safiyari cuts the evacuation quick and everything after it slow, so the new flat, offered by fellow cast member Babak (Babak Karimi), feels like a place to catch breath. It is not. The previous tenant has left her belongings behind a locked door and a child’s drawings on the wall, and the neighbours go quiet when she is mentioned. The event the film turns on happens off screen. Rana, expecting Emad, buzzes open the street door and gets in the shower. Farhadi cuts from the buzzer to Emad coming up the stairs; there is blood on the steps, and a neighbour, Shirin Aghakashi’s Esmat, is already mopping. We were horrified, and he had shown us almost nothing: a bathroom, a door left open, red on concrete. Because we never see it, we do what Emad does for the rest of the film: imagine it. He also has a stranger’s pickup truck outside. Hosseini plays Emad as a decent man going sour. The boys at his school like him; watch how that changes when he catches a pupil with a phone. Alidoosti plays Rana as someone who cannot stay in the flat alone, cannot say what happened, and flinches every time the buzzer goes. Hers is the harder performance and the film gives it less room. Most critics have noticed that the second hour follows the husband. Her fear is what he is angry about, and the film spends its time on his anger. Sattar Oraki keeps his music almost entirely on the stage. The flat runs on fridge hum and traffic, and the play gets the strings. Sara Samiee dresses Rana in a grey wig as Linda Loman and a headscarf as herself, and there is a good joke in rehearsal when Mina Sadati’s Sanam has to play the Woman in Boston in a raincoat because the stage cannot show what the scene requires. The cast laugh. The film has just told us what it is about: what can be said aloud in this city and what cannot. Emad searches for the man without the police, and the film is clear about why: a report means questions, and questions mean the neighbours find out. The middle stretch, Emad driving the truck round Tehran, Rana cooking a dinner he then refuses to eat, is the best of it. The last half hour is set almost entirely in one flat. We will not describe it, except to say that Farhadi has placed everyone in it so that an argument about shame and mercy can be had in full. The placing shows. Farid Sajjadi Hosseini gives the best performance in the film there, and even he cannot hide the carpentry. The trouble is the play. Willy Loman is a proud man brought low, and Farhadi wants us to hold that next to Emad, so he cuts to the stage whenever the flat gets close to the point. Once would have done. By the end the parallels are drawn in thick pen, and *A Separation*, where everyone had a case, looks the better film for having trusted us more. It runs 125 minutes and is a 12A. See it with someone you can argue with afterwards about what Emad should have done. You will not agree, and that is the part Farhadi got right. *Fi1m score 72, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like The Salesman, and none dismiss it. Nineteen of twenty-three reviews are positive, and the praise gathers around Farhadi’s plotting: a marriage upended by an attack in a new Tehran flat, built from ordinary incidents into something closer to a thriller. The performances are singled out almost everywhere, Hosseini’s husband in particular, played as a study in wounded male pride. Several reviews admire the long chamber sequence that closes the film. That same closing stretch is where the reviews split. The Guardian, Time Out and The Hollywood Reporter find it contrived and overwrought, and a handful call the film a lesser Farhadi. Consequence thinks the parallels with Death of a Salesman are laid on too thick. Empire notes it dwells on the husband’s reaction more than the wife’s trauma. The lone lukewarm review, from the Evening Standard, argues the characters shrink into positions on justice rather than people. The spread is otherwise narrow. ### Reviews we read (23) - **The New York Times**, A.O. Scott (Critic's Pick): Farhadi constructs a meticulous and suspenseful story from ordinary incidents in a Tehran marriage, packing it with resonant ideas about trust, honor, and violence. The integration of Arthur Miller's play adds a powerful layer to the tale of crime, punishment, and class. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/movies/the-salesman-review-asghar-farhadi.html) - **Slant Magazine**, Chuck Bowen (3.5/4): Farhadi merges Iranian thriller-procedural with American melodrama via parallels to Death of a Salesman, yielding tonal friction that is tragic and transcendent; the critic singles out the powerful chamber-drama sequences and the film's exacting empathy for praise. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-salesman/) - **The New Yorker** (85/100, inferred): Farhadi masterfully disorients viewers while probing questions of intimacy, respect, and violation in a Tehran couple's life after a disturbing incident. The final chamber piece delivers a piercing moral debate through shifting sympathies and cultural insight. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/the-salesman-and-split) - **Variety**, Owen Gleiberman (85/100, inferred): Farhadi delivers another finely cut gem of neorealist suspense about a Tehran couple whose lives are upended after moving into a new apartment. The film critiques the Iranian male gaze through strong performances and a true filmmaker's perspective. [Read](https://variety.com/2016/film/festivals/cannes-the-salesman-asghar-farhadi-1201779604/) - **Empire**, Andrew Lowry (80/100, inferred): Farhadi brings moral seriousness and class to a rape/revenge story through meticulous construction, elegant visuals and strong performances, though the film dwells more on the husband's reaction than the wife's trauma. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/salesman-2-review/) - **Los Angeles Times**, Justin Chang (80/100, inferred): The film unfolds an emotionally complex domestic tragedy centered on a couple's apartment troubles and stage roles, building to a devastating payoff in its final scenes. Hosseini delivers a study in emasculated rage amid the story's sleuthing and moral tensions. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-salesman-review-20170126-story.html) - **Vulture** (80/100, inferred): The review highlights the film's empathetic exploration of modern Iranian society, trauma, and moral ambiguity through a gripping narrative centered on an assault and its aftermath, commending the performances and the way it deepens social commentary. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2017/01/movie-review-the-salesman-asghar-farhadi.html) - **RogerEbert.com**, Tina Hassannia (75/100, inferred): The film uses elliptical storytelling to examine the aftermath of a traumatic incident for a married couple in Tehran, focusing on the husband's reaction to highlight flaws in traditional responses to such events. Hosseini's performance stands out in this exploration of Iranian society and gender dynamics. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/festivals/tiff-2016-aquarius-the-salesman-window-horses) - **Film Comment**, Nick Davis (70/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's ability to create competing sympathies through moral quandaries and a meta-theatrical premise. It singles out the lead performances and the way the story interrogates identification with characters. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/review-salesman-ashgar-farhadi/) - **Screen Daily** (70/100, inferred): Farhadi builds an intriguing study of a marriage unraveling after random misfortunes and an attack, with moral dilemmas around forgiveness and revenge. The director remains a master of pace and tension, though followers may find it a lesser achievement than his prior works. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-salesman-cannes-review/5104248.article) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (70/100, inferred): The critic finds it a minor Farhadi film: forceful, steely and well acted but a bit contrived and unsubtle. He singles out Farhadi's gimlet-eyed anatomising of middle-class hypocrisy in Iranian life, including candid treatment of prostitution, for praise while complaining about the grandiloquent and obvious final sequence. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/mar/17/the-salesman-review-asghar-farhadi-oscar-winner-iran) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Deborah Young (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the film less socially complex than Farhadi's prior work, with some contrived drama and tedious sections, but praises the powerful knockout finale and the director's shift toward highly dramatized storytelling. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/salesman-forushande-cannes-review-896196/) - **Little White Lies**, Mallory Andrews (5/3/4): Farhadi offers another astute look at contemporary Iranian society in this compelling relationship drama centered on a couple whose lives are upended after an attack on the wife. The film builds tension effectively through unspoken elements and strong performances but loses momentum in its later sections exploring revenge and masculinity. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/the-salesman) - **The Telegraph** (3/5): The review notes Farhadi's joined-up plotting and theatre background but finds the film tripped up by too many subplots. It praises the performances and the absorbing middle section exploring the rift between the couple. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/05/22/the-salesman-is-tripped-up-by-too-many-subplots---review/) - **Time Out**, Dave Calhoun (3/5): Farhadi returns to Tehran with a charged, intelligent but not entirely satisfying drama about a couple whose relationship is strained while performing in a production of Death of a Salesman. The film explores male pride and shame through symbolism and theatrical parallels but wanders and becomes over-engineered toward the end. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-salesman) - **Evening Standard**, Charlotte O'Sullivan (50/100, inferred): The film is well-acted with low-key pain and humour but ultimately lacks finesse in its script, turning characters into abstractions representing attitudes to justice rather than fully realised people. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/the-salesman-film-review-farhadi-undersells-miller-thriller-a3680321.html) - **Collider**, Brian Formo (A-): The critic calls the film Farhadi's most complex and risky work yet, a gripping tale of revenge that probes deeper societal issues than his prior films. They single out the illumination of Iranian cultural norms around shame, trauma, and the inability to openly address assault. [Read](https://collider.com/the-salesman-review-asghar-farhadi/) - **The Playlist**, Kevin Jagernauth (B+): The critic finds the film compelling and rich in texture but smaller and less universal than Farhadi's best work, ultimately falling short of greatness due to certain choices. Strong praise goes to the fleet-footed, thrilling storytelling and ability to root complex drama in everyday reality. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/asghar-farhadi-the-salesman-compelling-falls-short-greatness-20170125/) - **The Wrap**, Robert Abele (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a solid but not peak Farhadi morality play about a couple traumatized by violence, with strong character work and a gripping final act. The last 30 minutes are singled out as a marvel of moral suspense and mini-tragedy. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/the-salesman-review-asghar-farhadi-iran-oscar-foreign/) - **HeyUGuys**, Jo-Ann Titmarsh (75/100, inferred): The critic calls it an intelligent and interesting film that is restrained and masterful overall, with strong performances, especially from the leads, and good use of symmetry with the play. It loses some constraint and risks melodrama toward the end but remains a strong work. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/the-salesman-review/) - **Consequence** (B-): The film succeeds in its expertly plotted revenge quest and portrayal of trauma's fallout but weakens with heavy-handed parallels to the Miller play and some unwarranted melodrama. The critic notes it further cements Farhadi as a thoughtful if imperfect filmmaker. [Read](https://consequence.net/2016/09/tiff-film-review-the-salesman/) - **Eye for Film**, Amber Wilkinson (70/100, inferred): The critic praises Farhadi's precise control of mood and withholding of the attack itself to build tension and sympathy, along with strong character work. The main complaint is that while the slow burn grips, the plot becomes overwrought toward the climax. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-salesman-2016-film-review-by-amber-wilkinson) - **Paste**, Kenji Fujishima (7.5): Farhadi crafts another morality tale with deeply human, flawed characters whose actions after a violent assault reveal limits of empathy and the pull of pride or vengeance. The critic highlights the film's lingering questions of humanity and morality, especially around the male lead's response. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/the-salesman/the-salesman) ## Details - **Director:** Asghar Farhadi - **Director:** Asghar Farhadi - **Writer:** Asghar Farhadi - **Cinematography:** Hossein Jafarian - **Editor:** Hayedeh Safiyari - **Music:** Sattar Oraki - **Costume design:** Sara Samiee - **Producer:** Asghar Farhadi, Alexandre Mallet-Guy - **Cast:** Shahab Hosseini as Emad Etesami; Taraneh Alidoosti as Rana Etesami; Babak Karimi as Babak; Mina Sadati as Sanam; Mehdi Koushki as Siavash; Farid Sajjadi Hosseini as Naser; Maral Baniadam as Kati; Mojtaba Pirzadeh as Majid - **Runtime:** 2h 05m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG-13 - **Release (the US):** 2 May 2017 - **Genres:** Drama, Thriller - **Box office:** $7 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-61yYjKHHc ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: streaming, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: free, uhd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AE, AT, AU, BE, CA, CH, CO, DE, DK, FI, FR, GB, HK, IE, IT, JP, KR, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, SE, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 2017: Best International Feature Film (won) - International Submission to the Academy Awards 2017: International Submission to the Academy Awards (nominated) ## If you liked this - *A Separation* (2011), Fi1m 93: Farhadi’s tightest film, and the one where every person in it has a case. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-separation.md) - *Force Majeure* (2014), Fi1m 84: A husband fails his family in one instant and spends a ski holiday explaining it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/force-majeure.md) - *The Hunt* (2012), Fi1m 82: Mads Mikkelsen as a man a small town decides is guilty; nobody checks. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-hunt.md) - *Elle* (2016), Fi1m 82: Isabelle Huppert after an attack, refusing every response a film would normally hand her. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/elle.md) - *Death of a Salesman* (1985): Dustin Hoffman’s Willy Loman, filmed for television, for anyone who wants the play itself. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-salesman