Director: Ebrahim Hatamikia
Cast: Parviz Parastouei, Mahtab Nasirpour, Golshifteh Farahani, Kambiz Dirbaz, Shabnam Moghadami
Be Nameh Pedar is a 2006 Iranian drama-war film directed by Ebrahim Hatamikia, telling the quiet, devastating story of a father confronting the long shadow the Iran-Iraq War has cast over his family, particularly through the suffering of his land-mine-injured daughter.
What is Be Nameh Pedar about?
A middle-aged Iranian man carries a wound that time cannot close: his daughter was maimed by unexploded ordnance left behind by the Iran-Iraq War. As he struggles to care for her and hold the family together, old grief, guilt, and unspoken questions about sacrifice and duty rise to the surface. The film follows their relationship across a landscape still marked by conflict — emotionally, physically, and morally — building toward a reckoning neither father nor daughter can avoid. Hatamikia keeps the camera close to domestic detail, letting the war's legacy speak through the body and daily ritual rather than through spectacle.
Cast & crew
Parviz Parastouei anchors the film as the father, delivering the weary stoicism the role demands. Golshifteh Farahani appears in a supporting capacity, bringing her characteristic emotional precision. Mahtab Nasirpour plays the daughter at the center of the drama, and Kambiz Dirbaz, Shabnam Moghadami, Afshin Hashemi, Mir Taher Mazloomi, and Mehrdad Ziaei fill out the ensemble that populates this tightly drawn family portrait.
Context & significance
Ebrahim Hatamikia is one of Iran's most respected directors of sacred-defense cinema — films that grapple seriously with the human cost of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War rather than celebrating its heroics. Be Nameh Pedar (In the Name of Father) belongs to his later, more introspective phase, where the battlefield has receded but the damage it left in families and bodies remains vivid and unresolved. For diaspora viewers who grew up hearing family stories of the war, or who lost relatives to it, this film offers a rare form of recognition: it honors grief without sentimentality, and asks hard questions about the generations still living with the consequences. It is a film about fatherhood as much as war.
Where & how to watch
Be Nameh Pedar is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. No VPN is required and there is no geo-blocking — watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone. Start a subscription and cancel anytime.