Director: Bahman Farmanara

Cast: Ezatollah Entezami, Reza Kianian, Hedieh Tehrani, Jamshid Mashayekhi

Khanei Ruye Ab (House on Water) is a 2002 Iranian drama-fantasy film directed by Bahman Farmanara — his first Iranian feature in two decades after a long period abroad. It follows a prosperous Tehran doctor whose comfortable life begins to fracture following two unsettling encounters in a single night.

What is Khanei Ruye Ab about?

Dr. Reza Sepidbakht is a successful gynecologist in Tehran, outwardly settled but inwardly adrift. Late one night, returning home, he becomes convinced that he has struck an angelic figure with his car. At the hospital the next day, he encounters a comatose young boy celebrated for having committed the entire Quran to memory. These two collisions — one physical, one spiritual — shake his certainties about family, faith, and responsibility. He turns a clearer eye on the people closest to him: an aging father he has long neglected, a son whose choices trouble him, and women he has wronged. As the boy stirs from his coma, the doctor finds himself drawn to him as a possible guide through his own moral fog.

Cast & crew

Reza Kianian carries the film as the conflicted Dr. Sepidbakht, bringing a naturalistic restraint to a role that could easily veer into melodrama. The legendary Ezatollah Entezami brings quiet authority as the elderly father. Hedieh Tehrani and Jamshid Mashayekhi round out the principal cast. All four are among the most recognizable names in Iranian cinema.

Context & significance

Farmanara's return to Iranian filmmaking after roughly twenty years away gave this project a particular resonance for audiences who understood what that absence represented. The film sits within a tradition of Iranian art-house cinema that uses domestic interiors and quiet crisis to examine questions of conscience and belief. Its blending of realism with dreamlike imagery places it in dialogue with the allegorical strain of Iranian film that found audiences internationally in the 1990s and early 2000s. For diaspora viewers, the Tehran milieu — the hospital corridors, the family apartment, the night streets — carries the texture of a homeland seen at a slight remove, both familiar and charged.

Where & how to watch

Khanei Ruye Ab is available to stream on K-Time with original Persian audio. Watch on your browser, TV, or phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, no extra download required. Start a subscription and cancel anytime.