Director: Reza Heydarnejad
Cast: Parviz Parastouei, Mahnaz Afzali, Khosro Shakibai, Afsaneh Bayegan
Eshghe Shisheyi (Glass Love) is a 2000 Iranian comedy-adventure film directed by Reza Heydarnejad, following a bumbling aspiring actor whose dreams of stardom collapse so completely that he cannot even manage to exit life gracefully — a bittersweet portrait of ambition, failure, and accidental survival.
What is Eshghe Shisheyi about?
Jalal has staked everything on becoming a celebrated actor. He rents a modest room at the Golha inn in Tehran and goes from one audition to the next, but every opportunity slips through his fingers. The roles he lands are so small they barely register. When his career stalls for good and a romance he had been nurturing falls apart in the same season, Jalal reaches his lowest point and resolves that life holds nothing more for him. The darkly comic twist is that he cannot even follow through on that resolve — his attempts at a dramatic exit fail just as thoroughly as his showbiz career. Running out of ideas, he decides the only solution is to hire someone else to do what he cannot do himself, which sets off a chain of increasingly absurd situations.
Cast & crew
Director Reza Heydarnejad keeps the tone light and rueful throughout. Parviz Parastouei carries the film as Jalal, balancing pathos and broad physical comedy with ease. Mahnaz Afzali brings warmth to the romantic subplot, while the late Khosro Shakibai and Afsaneh Bayegan round out a cast of familiar faces from Iranian cinema's golden commercial era.
Context & significance
Iranian comedies of the late 1990s and early 2000s explored a specific kind of Tehran anxiety: the young man who arrives from the provinces or lower middle class with outsized dreams and collides with a city that is indifferent to ambition. Eshghe Shisheyi fits squarely in that tradition. For diaspora viewers who grew up watching these films on VHS or satellite, it carries strong nostalgic weight — the Golha inn setting, the Tehran street scenes, and the familiar cast all evoke a particular moment in pre-digital Iranian popular cinema. The film's absurdist undercurrent, where even self-destruction is beyond its hero's competence, gives it a warmth that has kept it in circulation among Persian-speaking communities worldwide.
Where & how to watch
Eshghe Shisheyi is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. You can watch it on your TV, computer, or phone — no VPN required, no geo-blocking, and no extra download needed. Start your membership and cancel anytime.