Director: Alireza Davoudnejad
Cast: Jamshid Mashayekhi, Ezzatolah Entezami, Davoud Rashidi, Masoud Behnoud, Mohammad-Reza Davoudnejad
Khaneye Ankabout (Spider's House) is a 1983 Iranian drama-thriller directed by Alireza Davoudnejad, set in the aftermath of Operation Eagle Claw. Four men sheltering in a northern Iranian villa find that political failure strips away every mask they have worn, exposing the lethal logic beneath their alliances.
What is Khaneye Ankabout about?
A remote villa in the forests of northern Iran becomes the unlikely refuge for four men, each embodying a different strand of a society shaped by foreign dependence and competing loyalties. They have gathered to await the outcome of a covert military operation. When that operation collapses, the careful balance holding them together collapses with it. Old hierarchies reassert themselves in brutal ways. The figure whose worldview rests on the dominance of external powers turns against his companions one by one, believing survival demands it. Only the youngest member of the group sees through the pretense in time — though that clarity comes at an unbearable price. The film closes with both men paying the full cost of what they understood.
Cast & crew
The film gathers some of pre- and post-revolutionary Iranian cinema's most authoritative presences. Jamshid Mashayekhi brings a studied gravity to his role, while Ezzatolah Entezami — one of the most celebrated actors in Iranian film history — lends the drama an almost theatrical weight. Davoud Rashidi and Masoud Behnoud round out the quartet, and Mohammad-Reza Davoudnejad appears alongside his father Alireza, who directed the picture.
Context & significance
Released in 1983, just a few years into the Islamic Republic and in the middle of the Iran-Iraq War, Khaneye Ankabout arrived at a moment when Iranian cinema was testing how far political allegory could reach. Davoudnejad chose a chamber format — four men, one location — to dissect questions that were anything but small: what does a society owe its members when the structures it trusted have failed it? For diaspora viewers, the film reads as a time capsule of a particular post-revolutionary anxiety: the suspicion that ideological alliances, whether to outside powers or domestic factions, hollow out individuals from the inside. The thriller pacing keeps it urgent across its 103 minutes.
Where & how to watch
Khaneye Ankabout is available on K-Time in its original Persian audio. Stream it on the web browser, on your Android TV or phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, cancel anytime.