Hamkhaneh is a 2007 Iranian feature directed by Mehrdad Farid, catalogued under romance and running ninety-three minutes. Its premise is a practical one: a place to live in Tehran, and the arrangement two students agree to in order to secure it.

What is Hamkhaneh about?

Mahsa has come to Tehran from Abadan to study, and staying on in the capital depends on finding somewhere to live. Her friend Haniyeh brings word of an opening: an older woman, Fakhri Khanom, is preparing to travel abroad and wants her house looked after while she is away, but will hand it over only to a young married couple. Mahsa is not married. To meet the condition she approaches Jamshid, a medical student who works shifts at a pizza shop, and asks him to appear as her husband for as long as the agreement lasts. The keys change hands, and on the surface the arrangement holds. The catalogue description stops there and leaves what follows to the film itself.

About the cast

Akbar Abdi, a long-familiar presence in Iranian popular cinema, heads the credited cast. Arzhang Amirfazli, Alireza Ashkan, Asal Badeei, Babak Badkoobe, Maryam Boubani, Behnam Davari and Shahrzad Kamalzadeh are also listed. Our records keep the ensemble without role assignments, so the names appear as credited rather than matched to characters.

Context & significance

Farid made the film in the second half of the 2000s, a stretch when Iranian popular cinema turned regularly to light romantic comedy built around ordinary domestic problems. The situation will be recognisable to Persian-speaking viewers: a student arriving in Tehran from another province, rent that does not fit a student income, and a landlord with conditions attached. Fakhri Khanom's requirement that the house go to a married couple supplies the borrowed-identity knot the story runs on, a device with a long history on stage and screen. K-Time records the entry as a standalone feature produced in Iran and performed in Persian.

Watching Hamkhaneh on Ktime

Hamkhaneh streams on K-Time. This page is free to read without signing in; playback opens once you log in with a K-Time account. The service is built for Persian-speaking viewers living outside Iran, the interface is Farsi-first, and the same catalogue is reachable in a browser, on phones and tablets, and on television.