2. A Separation - A Fall Down the Stairs
A Separation is a 2012 Iranian film directed by Asghar Farhadi, and although it operates under the guise of a low key inter-family drama, it is actually a thriller operating at a Hitchcockian level of suspense. A woman working as a maid in an upper-middle class apartment has a falling out with her boss which leads to a confrontation near the door. The woman is pregnant, and the man tries to push her out of his residence, and in the commotion the woman falls down the stairs. The audience can't see whether or not the man was truly responsible for her fall, they both took part in the confrontation and they are both the heroes in their own stories and the villains in each others. It's an incredibly tense sequence, a sensation that is only heightened by your inability to know the "truth" of what actually happened. This is perhaps the most pivotal scene in a movie where every scene is eminently important, and budget has nothing to do with how this scene was shot. Would it have been exciting to see what happened from a better viewpoint? Absolutely. But A Separation doesn't give you the easy way out, and having to contemplate the consequences of these actions is the hard part not only for the characters but the audience as well.