How do you convince a man that his luck has finally turned? Keesh-o Maat (2009), Jamshid Heydari's ensemble comedy of superstition and second chances, stakes its entire ninety minutes on that gamble — with Elnaz Shakerdoost and Hamid Goodarzi at the centre of the board.
What is Keesh-o Maat about?
Behrouz cannot catch a break. Every venture he starts collapses, and rather than ask why, he decides the universe simply has it in for him. Convinced his misfortune is permanent, he tries to end his own life — and fails at that too. On his second attempt he is stopped by Parisa, a young and rather high-strung psychology resident, who makes him an extravagant promise to keep him alive: his bad luck is over, and a great stroke of fortune is on its way. Behrouz takes the bait, but attaches a threat of his own — if the promised luck never arrives, he will finish what he started. That bargain sets off a chain of escalating misadventures, played for laughs, with a romantic current running underneath.
About the cast
The film pairs Elnaz Shakerdoost with Hamid Goodarzi and surrounds them with a who's-who of 2000s Iranian comedy: Behnoush Bakhtiari, Ali Sadeghi, Akbar Abdi, Mohammadreza Hedayati, Ahmad Pourmokhber, and Nima Shahrokhshahi. Several of these performers were fixtures of popular television at the time, which gave the film a ready-made comic shorthand with its audience.
Context & significance
The title translates as 'checkmate', and the chess metaphor frames the whole story — a man who believes the game is rigged against him, and a woman who bets she can play his fate better than he can. Director Heydari, a veteran of Iranian commercial cinema, folds romance and social observation into the comedy, a mix typical of the late-2000s mainstream. For diaspora audiences, the film doubles as a time capsule of that era's comic style and its instantly recognisable faces.
Watching Keesh-o Maat on Ktime
You can stream Keesh-o Maat on K-Time after a free account login — reading this page requires nothing at all. K-Time serves Persian-speaking viewers around the world with a Farsi interface and a deep catalogue of Iranian comedies like this one.