Director: Bahram Beizai
Cast: Susan Taslimi, Manuchehr Farid, Reza Babak, Siamak Atlasi, Mahin Deyham
Cherike Tara is a 1979 Iranian drama film directed by Bahram Beizai, blending mythological folklore with intimate human emotion. The film follows a young widow navigating loss, inheritance, and an unexpected encounter with a warrior from another age who changes the course of her solitary life.
What is Cherike Tara about?
Tara, recently widowed and raising two small children, makes the journey back from the countryside to her village after learning her grandfather has died. She takes on the task of distributing his belongings among the neighbors — a gesture of generosity that empties the house of nearly everything. One possession remains unclaimed: an ancient sword that nobody will accept. When Tara encounters a weathered warrior on the road, he insists his tribe sent him forward through time specifically to retrieve that sword. She eventually parts with it, and he sets off — only to turn back, because something stronger than duty has taken hold of him.
The K-Time take
Beizai brings his characteristic poetic restraint to every frame, treating myth and daily village life as two sides of the same coin. Susan Taslimi anchors the film with quiet authority, making Tara's resilience feel entirely lived-in rather than dramatized. The film rewards patient viewers who appreciate allegory woven into domestic realism.
Cast & crew
Bahram Beizai, one of the defining auteurs of Iranian cinema, directs with a mythic yet grounded sensibility honed across decades of theater and film. Susan Taslimi — among the most respected actresses of the pre-revolutionary era — leads as Tara, supported by Manuchehr Farid, Reza Babak, Siamak Atlasi, and Mahin Deyham in a cast rooted in Iranian stage and screen tradition.
Context & significance
Released in 1979, Cherike Tara arrived at one of the most turbulent moments in modern Iranian history, giving it a quality of cultural preservation as much as storytelling. Beizai drew on Persian oral tradition and mythic archetypes — the lone warrior, the keeper of ancestral objects, the widow who must hold together a world the men have left behind. For diaspora viewers, the film carries a particular resonance: it holds a vision of rural Iranian life and folk imagination that predates displacement, offering a rare window into a pre-revolutionary aesthetic that feels both ancient and urgent.
Where & how to watch
Cherike Tara is available on K-Time with original Persian audio and English subtitles. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, no extra download. Subscribe and cancel anytime.