Director: Dariush Mehrjui
Cast: Leila Hatami, Ali Mosaffa, Shaghayegh Farahani, Mohammad‑Reza Sharifinia, Jamileh Sheykhi
Leila is a 1997 Iranian drama film directed by Dariush Mehrjui, starring Leila Hatami and Ali Mosaffa as a young couple whose loving marriage is shaken by the discovery of infertility and the quiet, mounting pressure of family tradition. It remains one of Iranian cinema's most intimate portraits of a modern marriage.
What is Leila about?
A young couple, Leila and Reza, meet at a communal gathering and quickly fall in love. Their early married life is warm and full of promise — until medical visits confirm that Leila cannot bear children. Reza accepts this reality with calm devotion, but his mother refuses to leave the matter alone, gradually persuading him that continuing the family line demands a second wife. Leila, torn between her own silent anguish and her deep love for Reza, finds herself caught in a web of obligation, cultural expectation, and personal identity. The film traces how external pressure erodes the private world a couple has built, and asks what love actually owes to family, to tradition, and to oneself.
The K-Time take
Mehrjui directs with characteristic restraint, letting silences and glances carry the emotional weight that dialogue might overcrowd. Leila Hatami's performance is precise and devastating — she conveys an interior collapse without a single melodramatic beat. The film's power comes from its refusal to cast any character as purely villainous: each person acts from within their own logic, making the tragedy feel inevitable rather than manufactured.
Cast & crew
Leila Hatami brings controlled vulnerability to the title role, anchoring the film's emotional core with a performance of rare subtlety. Ali Mosaffa plays Reza with a gentle passivity that reads as both loving and, in time, deeply complicated. Shaghayegh Farahani appears in a supporting role, while Mohammad-Reza Sharifinia and Jamileh Sheykhi round out a cast that collectively grounds the story in recognizable family dynamics.
Context & significance
Directed by Dariush Mehrjui — one of the founding figures of the Iranian New Wave — Leila arrives at a moment when Iranian cinema was internationally celebrated for its social realism and psychological depth. The film addresses infertility and the pressure of patriarchal family expectations with an honesty rare for its era, and for diaspora viewers it carries additional resonance: it maps the exact tension between a couple's private relationship and the extended-family structures many Iranian families recognize across generations and borders. Its domestic drama is inseparable from the cultural landscape it documents.
Where & how to watch
Leila is available on K-Time in its original Persian audio. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, no extra download required. Cancel anytime.