Director: Vahid Nikkhah-Azzad

Cast: Soroush Sehat, Yekta Naser

Gonjeshkake Ashi Mashi is a 2018 Iranian social drama directed by Vahid Nikkhah-Azzad, running approximately 90 minutes. The film draws on everyday Persian life and the quiet tensions that run beneath ordinary social encounters, offering a grounded, human-scale portrait of contemporary Iran.

What is Gonjeshkake ashi mashi about?

A small bird — the sparrow of the title, a figure from Persian nursery rhyme and folklore — serves as the emotional anchor for a story rooted in neighborhood life and social obligation. When a seemingly minor incident ripples outward through a community, the consequences test loyalties and expose the gap between what people profess and how they actually behave. Nikkhah-Azzad keeps the camera close to faces and domestic spaces, letting accumulated detail do the work that exposition might otherwise handle. The stakes remain personal rather than grand, yet the film insists that the personal is never really small.

Cast & crew

The film is directed by Vahid Nikkhah-Azzad, a filmmaker with roots in Iranian social realism. Soroush Sehat and Yekta Naser carry the central performances, both bringing a naturalistic, understated quality that suits the film's observational register. Their work together grounds the drama in credible, recognizable human behavior.

Context & significance

Iranian social cinema has long found its sharpest material in the friction between private life and communal expectation — from Kiarostami's neighborhood studies to the contemporary generation of directors who follow that tradition. Gonjeshkake Ashi Mashi sits in that lineage, using a recognizably Persian setting and cultural reference (the ashi mashi sparrow of childhood rhyme) to speak to diaspora viewers who carry those same cultural memories. For Iranian families abroad, the film offers a window back into the texture of daily life in Iran — the chai, the courtyards, the unspoken codes — without sentimentalizing or exoticizing them.

Where & how to watch

Gonjeshkake Ashi Mashi is available on K-Time in its original Persian audio. Watch it on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, no extra download. Subscribe and cancel anytime.