Mourning is an Iranian drama film marking the feature debut of director Morteza Farshbaf, a protégé of the legendary Abbas Kiarostami. Quiet, observational, and rooted in everyday Iranian life, it signals the arrival of a filmmaker shaped by one of world cinema's great masters.
What is Mourning about?
After a bitter midnight quarrel at a relative's house in northern Iran, a young couple drives off toward Tehran without their small son — and by morning, word arrives that they have died on the road. The boy's aunt and her husband, both deaf, set out to take him home, arguing furiously but silently in sign language over who should tell him and what his future should be. Farshbaf keeps the camera close and patient, trusting the viewer to read the silences between characters. Much of the film unfolds inside the car on country roads, where the weight of loss presses against the ordinary business of a journey without ever tipping into melodrama. Relationships are tested in ways that feel entirely real, and the mood stays searching and contemplative from first frame to last.
About the cast
Mourning is the feature debut of Morteza Farshbaf, whose training under Abbas Kiarostami is evident in every considered frame. Kiarostami himself is one of Iranian cinema's defining voices, and Farshbaf carries that tradition forward with restraint and precision. The ensemble cast brings an unaffected naturalism to the family dynamics at the film's center.
Context & significance
For diaspora viewers, Mourning offers something rare: an Iranian film made outside the noise of commercial production, in the lineage of the slow, humanist cinema that put Iran on the world film map. Abbas Kiarostami's influence — patient observation, non-professional textures, the poetry of the everyday — runs through the work of every filmmaker he mentored, and Farshbaf is among the most quietly assured of that generation. Watching this film abroad, far from the family structures it depicts, can sharpen its emotional resonance in unexpected ways. The grief and the family bonds it portrays will feel immediate to Iranian-diaspora viewers who know what it means to lose someone at a distance.
Watching Mourning on Ktime
Mourning is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing. Stream it on the web browser, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, and no extra download required. Start watching anytime and cancel anytime.