Director: Nosratollah Karimi
Cast: Nosratollah Karimi, Morteza Haj Seyed Ahmadi, Shahla Riyahi, Jale Saam, Mohammad Kolahdouzan
Khaneh Kharab is a 1976 Iranian drama-comedy film directed by and starring Nosratollah Karimi, following a middle-class Tehran family whose dream of building a modern apartment block slowly unravels the fabric of their traditional household and brings ruin where they sought prosperity.
What is Khaneh Kharab about?
Nowruz Khan is a modest government clerk who has spent his life in the family ancestral home alongside his wife, his son Homayoun, his daughter Nazi, and his daughter-in-law Farangis. Pressured by the younger generation's ambitions, he agrees to sell the beloved old house and buy a plot of land where a multi-story apartment will rise. The project quickly outpaces his civil-service salary and he slides toward insolvency. In desperation, Nazi's fiancé Fereydoun turns to theft — stealing his own mother's diamond ring and selling it — hoping the money will plug the growing financial hole. The film traces how a single fateful decision sets off a chain of compromises, small betrayals, and quietly painful consequences for everyone under that crumbling roof.
Cast & crew
Nosratollah Karimi — one of Iranian pre-revolutionary cinema's most versatile figures — pulls double duty here as both director and lead, playing Nowruz Khan with understated warmth. Morteza Haj Seyed Ahmadi, Shahla Riyahi, Jale Saam, Mohammad Kolahdouzan, Shahin Rezaiy, and Shiva round out the ensemble, each embodying a recognisable Tehran family type of the era.
Context & significance
Released in 1976, just three years before the revolution reshaped Iranian society, Khaneh Kharab captures a Tehran in transition — old courtyard homes giving way to concrete apartment blocks, and a generation caught between inherited values and imported aspirations. For the diaspora, the film works on two levels: as a window onto the pre-revolutionary urban middle class many families came from, and as a timeless comedy of domestic ambition gone wrong. Karimi's blend of gentle satire and genuine empathy for all his characters gives the film its lasting warmth. Watching it today, the period detail — the dress, the street sounds, the bureaucratic small-print — feels like opening a family photograph album from another era.
Where & how to watch
Khaneh Kharab is available to stream 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.