Director: Majid-Reza Mostafavi
Cast: Mohsen Kiayee, Baran Kosari, Mahtab Nasirpour, Niki Karimi, Siamak Safari
A father comes home after years away expecting to reclaim the house he left, and finds a family that rearranged itself entirely without him.
What is Astigmat about?
Astigmat opens with an estranged husband and father returning to reclaim the home he once shared with his wife, son, daughter-in-law, and grandson, a house that has kept running fine in his absence. His son has turned the basement into a leech farm, banking on it as a shortcut to money, and sees an opening: if he can talk his parents back together, the house and the family both stay intact. His mother has other plans; she's already looking toward a second marriage and isn't interested in reassembling the old arrangement just because her husband walked back in. Underneath the adult standoff runs a smaller, quieter story: the nine-year-old grandson has developed a crush on his schoolteacher, and the fallout from that infatuation spills into both households, teacher's and family's alike, in ways nobody quite anticipated.
Cast & crew
Mohsen Kiayee anchors the film as the returning father, opposite Niki Karimi and Baran Kosari as the women navigating what his return actually costs them. Mahtab Nasirpour, Siamak Safari, Hadi Hejazifar, Hossein Pakdel, and Hesam Mahmoudi round out a dense ensemble spanning three generations under one roof.
Context & significance
Director Majid-Reza Mostafavi builds Astigmat, a 2018 release, around a single house and the mismatched expectations of everyone living in it, rather than a conventional plot engine, closer to a family-drama ensemble piece than a story with one clear protagonist. The film runs about 85 minutes and holds a 5.2 rating on IMDb.
Where & how to watch
Astigmat is available to watch on K-Time with a free account login, in its original Persian, through an interface built specifically for Farsi-speaking viewers abroad. The film's page itself is free to browse without signing in.