Director: Reza Mirkarimi

Cast: Hamed Behdad, Zhila Shahi, Azadeh Nobahar

Ghasreh Shirin is a 2019 Iranian drama film directed by Reza Mirkarimi, running 82 minutes. It follows a fragmented family forced into an uneasy reunion after tragedy strikes, asking hard questions about responsibility, absence, and the weight parents carry long after a marriage ends.

What is Ghasreh Shirin about?

Jalal has spent years apart from his children, living a separate life after his family broke apart. When news arrives that their mother has passed away, he travels back to the family home to settle affairs. The children are there, grieving and uncertain. Jalal knows he must handle practical matters, yet he wrestles with whether he is willing — or able — to take the children with him and rebuild something that looks like a family. The film holds its tension in glances, silences, and small decisions, letting the viewer feel exactly how much distance can open up between people who once shared everything.

Cast & crew

Director Reza Mirkarimi is one of Iran's most respected voices in family and social cinema, known for measured, emotionally honest storytelling. Hamed Behdad anchors the film as Jalal, bringing a physicality and restraint that keeps the character from easy sympathy or easy condemnation. Zhila Shahi and Azadeh Nobahar round out the central performances with quiet precision.

Context & significance

Iranian family drama has long excelled at exposing fault lines within domestic life — the gap between duty and desire, between what parents owe children and what they actually give. Ghasreh Shirin sits in that tradition, shaped by a post-revolution social reality in which divorce still carries stigma and fathers who leave rarely come back on good terms. For diaspora viewers who grew up watching relatives navigate exactly these pressures, the film resonates as something more than fiction. It names a familiar grief: the child who waited, and the parent who arrived too late to fully matter.

Where & how to watch

Ghasreh Shirin is available now on K-Time with original Persian audio. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, cancel anytime.