Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Cast: Ali Darakshi, Mohammad Kasebi, Majid Majidi, Morteza Masa'eli
Esteazeh is a 1984 Iranian drama film directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, running 65 minutes. Set against a stark moral framework, it follows five men who withdraw to a remote island seeking spiritual confrontation with the Devil, rendered in an allegorical style that defined Makhmalbaf's early career.
What is Esteazeh about?
Five men journey to an isolated island with a shared spiritual purpose: to face and overcome a demonic adversary. One by one, four of the men succumb to the temptations placed before them, each meeting their end in turn. The fifth man alone endures — not through strength or cunning, but through a form of radical acceptance that the film frames as a path to overcoming evil. Makhmalbaf constructs the narrative as a morality parable, stripping the setting down to essentials so the internal conflict of each character takes center stage. The island becomes a testing ground where faith, desire, and will are measured against each other.
Cast & crew
The film stars Ali Darakshi, Mohammad Kasebi, Morteza Masa'eli, and Majid Majidi — who would later become one of Iranian cinema's most internationally recognized directors, known for films about children and spirituality. Their performances here are measured and restrained, in keeping with the film's parable structure. Director Mohsen Makhmalbaf was at an early and explicitly religious phase of his work in 1984.
Context & significance
Esteazeh belongs to the first wave of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, a period when moral and religious allegory was a central mode of storytelling. Makhmalbaf, before his later pivot toward more humanist and politically complex filmmaking, worked within this framework explicitly. For diaspora viewers interested in the full arc of Iranian cinema history — from the ideologically charged early 1980s to the internationally celebrated art-house wave of the 1990s — Esteazeh offers an instructive and honest document of that earlier moment. The film also offers a rare early screen appearance by Majid Majidi, whose subsequent directorial career produced internationally screened works. Watching Esteazeh alongside later Iranian films reveals how dramatically the country's filmmakers evolved over the following decades.
Where & how to watch
Esteazeh is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. No Persian subtitles are included for this title. You can watch on a web browser, a TV device, or your phone — no VPN required, no geo-blocking, and you can cancel anytime.