Landing a job should be the easy part of getting married — but for Jahangir, fresh out of military service in Asghar Hashemi's 1990 comedy-drama Dar Arezooie Ezdevaj (Wishing for Marriage), it becomes the wall his whole family throws itself against.
What is Dar Arezooie Ezdevaj about?
Jahangir has finished his military service and wants to marry Nahid. Her father agrees on one condition: the groom must first prove himself with steady, respectable employment, and he sets a firm deadline. When Jahangir's search turns up nothing in time, he asks his father, the retired civil servant Mashallah Khan, to step in. The old man is certain that a lifetime of honest work in the state bureaucracy has earned him enough goodwill to get his son hired — a belief the office director punctures with a flat refusal. Undeterred, Mashallah Khan travels to the central administration to plead his case, and there he crosses paths with a smooth-talking middleman whose promises pull him down a road that upends far more than the wedding plans.
About the cast
Akbar Abdi, one of the most popular comic actors of Iranian cinema, heads a large ensemble that includes Kamand Amirsoleimani, Bijan Emkanian, Jamshid Esmailkhani, Mehdi Fathi, Maryam Hazhirvand and Jamshid Layegh. Hamideh Kheirabadi, adored by generations of Iranian audiences as the mother figure of countless films, also appears.
Context & significance
Asghar Hashemi directed the film in 1990, at a moment when Iranian society was emerging from the war years and comedies about unemployment, red tape and the gap between honest citizens and the systems meant to serve them found a ready audience. The story's engine — a father who believes decades of loyal service must count for something — lets the film poke fun at bureaucracy while staying affectionate toward its characters. Iranian family films of this period often mixed laughter with social observation, and this one runs a brisk 99 minutes in exactly that spirit.
Watching Dar Arezooie Ezdevaj on Ktime
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