Director: Mohammad Hossein Latifi
Cast: Baran Kosari, Majid Salehi, Sadegh Safaie
Khanedokhtar is a 2015 Iranian drama-horror film directed by Mohammad Hossein Latifi, starring Baran Kosari and Majid Salehi. Set on the outskirts of Tehran, it follows two young women navigating university life while strange and frightening events close in around them.
What is Khanedokhtar about?
Roya and Shirin are lifelong friends on the cusp of a new chapter: admission to a university in a city near Tehran. Eager for independence, they rent a modest house together — a practical solution that quickly turns unsettling. As weeks pass, the two women notice odd disturbances around their neighborhood: local brides have been vanishing without explanation, and a creeping unease settles over the community. What begins as ordinary student life gives way to something far darker, as the friends try to piece together the source of a threat that seems to be closing in on them. The film builds its dread slowly, rooting its horror in domestic space and the vulnerability of two women alone in an unfamiliar place.
Cast & crew
Baran Kosari, one of Iran's most respected actresses, brings quiet intensity to the role of Roya. Majid Salehi and Sadegh Safaie provide grounded supporting turns that keep the story anchored in recognizable human behavior even as the atmosphere grows increasingly strange. Director Mohammad Hossein Latifi, known for genre-inflected Iranian cinema, shapes the film's slow-burn tension.
Context & significance
Iranian genre cinema has a long, if often overlooked, tradition of horror rooted in domestic dread — haunted houses, disappeared women, communities gripped by fear they cannot name. Khanedokhtar sits firmly within that lineage, using the coming-of-age premise of two women leaving home for the first time as a canvas for something more unsettling. For diaspora viewers, the film resonates on multiple levels: the familiar Tehran-adjacent cityscape, the social rituals around marriage and communal life, and the particular vulnerability of young Iranian women navigating spaces not designed with their safety in mind. It is a rare Iranian horror offering that grounds its scares in social reality.
Where & how to watch
Khanedokhtar 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.