Director: Asghar Farhadi
Cast: Hamid Farokhnezhad, Hediyeh Tehrani, Taraneh Alidoosti, Pantea Bahram, Sahar Dolatshahi
Chaharshanbe Soori is a 2006 Iranian drama film directed by Asghar Farhadi, set over the course of a single day in Tehran as a woman's unspoken fears about her marriage converge with the lives of strangers around her. Running 102 minutes, it marks one of Farhadi's earliest full explorations of domestic tension and moral ambiguity.
What is ChaharshanbehSoori about?
The evening before a couple's planned trip abroad, the wife, consumed by suspicion that her husband is having an affair, arranges for a young woman named Roohi to come and clean the apartment. She then asks Roohi — a newly engaged and inexperienced young woman — to visit a nearby beauty salon and discreetly find out information about the woman she suspects. As the day unfolds, a web of interactions forms among the couple, their young son, the wife's sister and brother-in-law, the salon worker, and Roohi herself. Each character carries assumptions about the others, and small acts — a phone call, a question asked at the wrong moment, a favor granted too easily — ripple outward in ways none of them anticipated. The film observes these intersecting lives without judgment, allowing the audience to weigh trust, loyalty, and misunderstanding for themselves.
Cast & crew
Asghar Farhadi directs a cast of accomplished Iranian performers. Hediyeh Tehrani plays the suspicious wife with controlled, restrained intensity. Taraneh Alidoosti portrays Roohi, the young cleaning woman caught in the middle. Hamid Farokhnezhad appears as the husband, and Pantea Bahram, Sahar Dolatshahi, and Hooman Seyadi fill out the ensemble of interconnected figures whose paths cross over this single charged day.
Context & significance
Released in 2006, Chaharshanbe Soori takes its name from the Persian fire festival celebrated on the last Wednesday eve of the year — an annual ritual that carries themes of renewal, purging the old, and stepping into the unknown. Farhadi uses the festive backdrop as a quiet counterpoint to the domestic unease playing out inside one Tehran apartment. The film is an early example of the intimate, ensemble-driven realism that would later define his international reputation. For diaspora viewers, it captures the textures of middle-class Tehran life — the rhythms of a household, the weight of social expectation, the gap between what is said and what is meant — with a clarity that remains vivid regardless of where you are watching from.
Where & how to watch
Chaharshanbe Soori is available to stream on K-Time in its original Persian audio. No VPN is needed and there is no geo-blocking. Watch on the web, your TV, or your phone, and cancel your membership anytime.