Director: Maryam Moghadam, Behtash Sanaeeha
Cast: Maryam Moghadam, Alireza Sani Far, Pourya Rahimi Sam
Ghasideie Gav Sefid (Ballad of the White Cow) is a 2020 Iranian drama film co-directed by Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha, starring Moghadam herself in a role that anchors one of Iranian cinema's most quietly devastating portraits of a woman confronting a system that failed her.
What is Ghasideie Gav Sefid about?
When Mina receives word that her husband was put to death for a crime he did not commit, her carefully constructed life collapses. Rather than retreat into grief, she chooses to pursue accountability — pressing against bureaucratic walls that were not built to yield. At the same time, she must shield her young deaf daughter from the full weight of what has happened, raising her alone while holding together the fragments of a shattered household. A stranger eventually appears at their door, carrying his own connection to the case in ways Mina does not yet understand. The film follows her quiet, persistent effort to get someone — anyone — to acknowledge that an irreversible wrong was done, and to reckon with the human cost of a system that offers no apology.
The K-Time take
Moghadam and Sanaeeha construct the film with a near-documentary restraint that makes its emotional force all the more striking. The long takes and natural light refuse sentimentality, placing the viewer inside Mina's methodical endurance rather than at a safe observing distance. Moghadam's performance carries the film's moral weight without ever tipping into rhetoric — a rare achievement in films of this kind.
Cast & crew
Maryam Moghadam, who also co-wrote and co-directed, plays Mina with a controlled intensity that dominated festival discussions around the film. Alireza Sani Far appears in a key supporting role whose emotional complexity deepens as the story unfolds. Pourya Rahimi Sam rounds out the principal cast, bringing texture to the film's secondary moral stakes.
Context & significance
For Iranian diaspora viewers, Ghasideie Gav Sefid resonates on several layers at once. It belongs to a strong lineage of socially committed Iranian cinema — films that examine how ordinary people absorb institutional violence — but it is also explicitly a story about women's resilience inside structures designed to sideline them. Co-directed by a woman and carrying a female lead through every scene, the film represents a shift in who tells these stories. Abroad, where many viewers left Iran carrying their own experiences of opaque legal systems and unacknowledged loss, the film's refusal to offer easy closure reads as honest rather than bleak. It was selected as Iran's submission for the International Feature Film Oscar and won prizes at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Where & how to watch
Ghasideie Gav Sefid is available now on K-Time in its original Persian audio. No VPN is needed; no extra download required. Watch on the web, your TV, or your phone, and cancel anytime.