Director: Asghar Farhadi
Cast: Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti, Babak Karimi, Mina Sadati, Mehdi Koushki
Forushande (The Salesman) is a 2016 Iranian-French drama film directed by Asghar Farhadi, starring Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti as a married couple whose domestic life is upended by a traumatic event in their new Tehran apartment, unraveling questions of guilt, justice, and dignity.
What is Forushande about?
Emad and Rana are a young married couple living in Tehran. When structural damage forces them to vacate their building, they take up residence in an apartment recently vacated by a woman of uncertain reputation. One night, while Emad is away, Rana is confronted by an unwanted intruder — an incident whose details neither partner fully shares with the other. As the aftermath settles over their daily lives, tensions surface between them: differing views on what happened, how to respond, and whether to pursue the matter privately or involve authorities. Emad, who also teaches literature and performs in an amateur production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, finds the themes of the play bleeding into his own choices. The film tracks how a single event reshapes trust between two people and within a community.
Cast & crew
Asghar Farhadi directs with the controlled, dialogue-driven precision that characterizes his work. Shahab Hosseini plays Emad, a schoolteacher and stage actor caught between reason and impulse. Taraneh Alidoosti portrays Rana with interior restraint, conveying her character's isolation without melodrama. The supporting cast includes Babak Karimi, Mina Sadati, Mehdi Koushki, and Farid Sajjadi Hosseini, each anchoring the social world surrounding the couple.
Context & significance
Forushande was a French-Iranian co-production released in 2016 and screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The film's use of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman as a parallel text is intentional: both narratives examine how men construct and then defend a version of dignity in the face of loss. For diaspora viewers, the Tehran setting — its apartment blocks, rehearsal halls, and everyday friction — provides a familiar urban texture. The film's structure belongs squarely in Farhadi's recurring mode: a domestic crisis that spreads outward through a circle of acquaintances, each responding according to their own pressures and loyalties. Viewers who know A Separation or About Elly will recognize the moral architecture immediately.
Where & how to watch
Forushande is available on K-Time in its original Persian audio without Persian subtitles. You can watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, cancel anytime.