What do you do when a court hands your daughter to your ex-husband? In Cheshmak (2008), an Iranian comedy fronted by the beloved Akbar Abdi, one wealthy woman answers that question in an unexpected way — by opening her door to a child from an orphanage.
What is Cheshmak about?
After family troubles end her marriage, a prosperous woman watches custody of her daughter pass to the girl's father. The loss leaves a hole in her comfortable life that money cannot fill, so she resolves to take in a child from an orphanage and start over as a guardian. Adoption, it turns out, is nothing like she imagined: the new arrangement upends her routines, her household, and her assumptions about what caring for a child actually demands. The film mines the collision between her polished world and her new reality for warm, family-friendly comedy.
About the cast
Akbar Abdi, one of the most recognizable comic actors in Iranian cinema and a performer whose career spanned more than four decades from the 1980s onward, headlines the ensemble. Around him, director Jahangir Jahangiri assembles a broad supporting cast that includes Arzhang Amirfazli, Ahmad Aghaei, Safa Ahmadi, Majid Alizadeh, Mohammad Amighi, Morteza Ataei, and Saeed Bahadori.
Context & significance
Iranian popular cinema of the 2000s produced a steady stream of family comedies built around domestic upheaval, and Cheshmak sits squarely in that tradition. Its premise — a divorced woman seeking a second chance at motherhood through adoption — lets the film touch on custody, class comfort, and orphanage life while keeping the tone light. At a brisk 81 minutes, it is the kind of undemanding crowd-pleaser that reached Iranian cinemas in the summer of 2009 yet remains little known abroad, which makes it a nostalgic find for diaspora viewers who grew up with Abdi's screen persona.
Watching Cheshmak on Ktime
Cheshmak streams on K-Time in its original Persian. Anyone can read this page, but you will need to log in with a K-Time account to watch. K-Time is a Persian-focused streaming service for Iranians abroad, with a Farsi interface and a catalog built around Iranian film and television.