An attractive married couple with all the badges of mid-life success — jobs, car, private school, nice apartment — have lost their love to stubbornness, resentment and the grinding duties of a demented elderly parent and a pubescent daughter under the same roof. None of that will keep them together.

The characters in writer-director, Asgha Farhadi’s new film, A Separation, are a modern, urban every-couple, except that their D-I-V-O-R-C-E is spelled in Farsi. What is surprising is how much these people are like us, despite living in Tehran, home to the Ayatullah’s virtue squads and dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s crisis-provoking nuclear ambitions.

Farhadi’s fifth movie, A Separation, is also about gender politics — no surprise in the land of the chador — but even that theme is eerily familiar. The wife is a modern woman obliged to cover her head in public, and she wants to get her daughter out of Iran.

Her husband would not consider leaving because his elderly father needs him. As their initial separation leads to disaster, it becomes clear that official female repression is not the deal-breaker, as much as the clash between man and woman, recognizable to anyone who has ever been married.

Inaugurating the film’s American release, Farhadi screened it in New York recently to a small crowd of notables, including the chief of Sony Classics, which is distributing the film in the United States., filmmaker Michael Moore and author Erica Jong.

In an interview session, Farhadi, speaking Farsi, spoke about state censorship, and said Iranian television has never shown any of his films, though it has broadcast pirated versions of Michael Moore’s movies. Moore admitted he gets emails from Iranian fans. “You touted me as the Ayatullah’s favorite filmmaker,” he noted. “I know they show my films because they show the dark side of America. But my films are also about rising up against authority.”

In its own subtle way, A Separation does for Americans what Moore’s films do for Iranians. While Moore’s films argue that Americans are cursed with bad leaders and policies — something Iranians can understand — A Separation reveals the equivalence between us and them.

Even officialdom looks like ours: Apparently, Iranian family court and criminal judges are just like our harried bureaucrats (not the Inquisitors we expect) and everyone, even women, moves around with a freedom many Americans cannot imagine in security-state Iran. Can Iranians “just get in their cars and drive?” an audience member asked Farhadi. “There is a difference between the people of a country, and its politicians,” he replied.

After decades of national distrust and rumours of war rumbling as predictably as the seasons, it is almost impossible for Americans to believe that Iranian people share the vicissitudes of modern life, whether it is watching their love dissolved or getting in their cars to drive.

With the US government sanctioning Iran and the Iranian regime threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, this quietly powerful movie is like the lone man or woman standing in front of the inevitable tank, reminding us that domestic sorrow is impervious to national borders, peace and war.

Aside Farhadi’s film, the political firmament in Iran is as turbulent and uncertain as the cloudy sky. So unpredictable is the nation’s leader and his spiritual mentors that the citizens are rudely opaque in determining their future.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government has openly declared its intention to pursue an ambitious nuclear programme, which it claims is directed at improving the power generation capacity and other development imperatives in the country. Ahmadinejad has viciously campaigned for the international community’s understanding of Iran’s desire to move beyond its peripheral status as a developing nation, depending on oil and gas as major sources of revenue.

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called the bluff of the United States and the entire United Nations on the issue of nuclear programme and its development. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has severally challenged Iran to open its nuclear facilities for unfettered inspection. But the regime continues with uranium enrichment programme and tightly controls the way it conducts business with the international community. Indeed, Iran, under Ahmadinejad, does not want any Western organization to come close.

For its recalcitrance, the IAEA recently pulled out of Iran, alleging the country’s leaders’ unwillingness to allow its personnel unrestricted access to the secret nuclear facilities for inspection. Even as IAEA has pulled out, complaining of Iran’s violation of UN directives on inspection of the facilities, Russia and China appear indifferent and continue to look the other way.

While that is going on, the Iranian people are daily inundated with the difficult realities of life in a country crammed by an avalanche of sanctions from the West, especially the United States. And the Barrack Obama administration is hell bent on slamming on sanctions on Iran until its leaders comply with the many UN resolutions giving vent to the IAEA inspection and control of the strategic programme.

However, the fear over the unpredictable intentions of Ahmadinejad is rising. In Israel, both the government and the people are committed to countering the Iranian force. And the Jewish nation has left no one in doubt that it has the capacity and capability to roll off the Iranian might and level the Persian great to dust, if and only if Ahmadinejad provokes any tension and crisis in the region.

Now back to the issue of social lives of both the Iranians and the Americans. It is now common knowledge that the Iranians are as engraved and unhappy as most Americans are today. In fact, the rate of divorce in American homes is rising just as the rate of films churned out daily from Hollywood. The number of single mothers and single fathers has increased over the last decade.

But unlike Iran, the cultural differences and lifestyles in America are fast shrinking. The dark border of colour and creed are fading as fast as the rate of integration is speeding as light wave. Even at that, Americans are still as unhappy as the Iranians, with no sanctions to contend with.

Is this meeting point the aggregation of Ahmadinejad and Obama? No. It is only the faint order of our social semblance. The culture of contemporary lifestyle has brought both Iranians and Americans together on the same table.

Burleigh is a journalist and the author of five books, including The Fatal Gift of Beauty.

Nina Burleigh