Director: Behtash Sanaeeha, Maryam Moghaddam
Cast: Lili Farhadpour, Esmaeel Mehrabi, Mohammad Heidari, Melika Pazouki
Keyke Mahboobe Man (My Favourite Cake) is a 2024 Iranian drama film co-directed by Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam, streaming in Persian on K-Time. A co-production between Iran, France, Germany, and Sweden, the film offers a quietly radical portrait of late-life desire and solitude set entirely in Tehran.
What is Keyke Mahboobe Man about?
Mahin is a widow living on her own in Tehran. Her days move at a measured, self-contained pace — her daughter is far away in Europe, and her social world has gradually contracted around her. One afternoon, a tea gathering with old friends disrupts that equilibrium. A chance encounter that follows pulls Mahin toward something she had stopped expecting: connection, warmth, and the tentative possibility of romance. The film stays close to Mahin's perspective, tracing her small, careful decisions as she weighs the cost and meaning of opening up again at her stage of life.
The K-Time take
Sanaeeha and Moghaddam direct with the same understated precision that distinguished their earlier collaboration Ballad of a White Cow. Here they build tension not from plot mechanics but from silence and social expectation — the weight of what an older Iranian woman is and is not permitted to want. Lili Farhadpour's performance is the film's anchor: restrained, specific, and quietly devastating. At 97 minutes the film never wastes a scene.
Cast & crew
Lili Farhadpour leads the film as Mahin, bringing a disciplined gravity to a role that demands more withholding than expression. Esmaeel Mehrabi, Mohammad Heidari, and Melika Pazouki round out the supporting cast. Behind the camera, co-directors Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam — a filmmaking partnership that has drawn sustained international attention — bring a distinctive, observational style to the material.
Context & significance
Keyke Mahboobe Man premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024, where it competed in the main selection and earned significant critical attention. The film sits at the intersection of Iranian social realism and European art-house co-production — a combination that has made it accessible to festival audiences worldwide while remaining rooted in a specifically Tehran-centred emotional register. For diaspora viewers, the film carries particular weight: it speaks directly to themes of separation, aging in isolation, and the difficulty of living fully when family is oceans away. Its gaze at an older woman's interior life is itself a quiet political act within Iranian cinema's landscape.
Where & how to watch
Keyke Mahboobe Man is available to stream on K-Time in its original Persian audio. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN required, no geo-blocking, and you can cancel anytime.