Director: Mohammad Abdizadeh
Cast: Ali Ansarian, Hossein Dalman, Mahchehreh Khalili
Eshgho Khianat is an Iranian drama film directed by Mohammad Abdizadeh, following the collision between personal loyalty and national conscience when an engineer and his daughter arrive in a remote village on the Mughan plain to oversee a project with troubling implications for the community.
What is Eshgho Khianat about?
An engineer travels with his daughter to a rural settlement on the Mughan plain, tasked with overseeing an infrastructure project. As the two settle into the rhythms of village life, they begin to understand the human cost of what is being built around them. The project — conceived far from this place — stands opposed to the genuine interests of the people who live there. Father and daughter find themselves caught between professional duty and a growing moral unease, forced to weigh what they have been sent to accomplish against what they witness every day. The film unfolds as a quiet study of complicity, conscience, and the gap between institutional power and ordinary lives.
Cast & crew
Director Mohammad Abdizadeh leads a cast anchored by Ali Ansarian and Hossein Dalman, with Mahchehreh Khalili in a supporting role. The film also draws on the presence of Homayoun Ershadi — a name well known to Iranian cinema audiences — in the role of the engineer, and Shahrazad Kamalzadeh as his daughter, adding recognizable faces to this rural drama.
Context & significance
Stories set in Iran's rural north and northwest carry a distinct weight in Persian cinema, where land, water, and infrastructure projects have long intersected with questions of political power and community survival. Eshgho Khianat fits within a strand of Iranian social drama that places ordinary people — engineers, village residents, families — inside larger systemic forces they cannot fully control. For diaspora viewers raised on these landscapes or familiar with the tensions between state-sanctioned development and local life, the film speaks a familiar language. It asks quiet but pointed questions about loyalty, self-interest, and what it means to serve a system whose goals may not align with the people it claims to benefit.
Where & how to watch
Eshgho Khianat is available on K-Time with Persian audio. Watch on your browser, TV, or phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, no extra download required. A K-Time subscription gives you access to the full catalog; cancel anytime.