Director: Asma Ebrahimzadegan
Cast: Bahareh Riahi Hamed Nejabat Majid Aghakarimi Mehrdad Mostafavi Sonia Sanjari
Mantaghe is a 2024 Iranian short film directed by Asma Ebrahimzadegan, running approximately 23 minutes. Set on a film production set, it probes the gap between who a performer is expected to be and who she actually is — a quiet, unsettling study in identity and performance anxiety.
What is Mantaghe about?
On the day of a shoot, every practical detail has been arranged and the crew is standing by. Yet the central figure — a woman — cannot settle into the role assigned to her. A creeping certainty takes hold: the people around her do not see her at all; they see a version of her she has never agreed to become. Without warning she steps away from the set entirely, leaving the man opposite her suspended in an unfamiliar, uncomfortable emotional state. The film sits with that absence rather than resolving it, letting the silence between characters carry the weight of everything left unsaid about expectation, labor, and selfhood.
Cast & crew
Director Asma Ebrahimzadegan brings a restrained, observational style to a story built almost entirely on interior tension. The ensemble includes Bahareh Riahi and Hamed Nejabat in the central roles, supported by Majid Aghakarimi, Mehrdad Mostafavi, and Sonia Sanjari. The cast keeps the film's emotional register low and precise, grounding its abstract premise in lived, recognizable behavior.
Context & significance
Short cinema from Iran has long served as a proving ground for bold formal choices that longer commercial productions rarely risk. Mantaghe fits within a tradition of Iranian shorts that use the film-within-a-film framework not as clever meta-commentary but as a direct vehicle for examining social pressure on women — pressure to perform, to conform, to suppress the self. For diaspora viewers, that theme carries additional weight: the experience of being seen only through others' expectations is one many Iranian women abroad navigate daily. At 23 minutes, the film rewards patient, attentive viewing and speaks clearly to audiences who have lived between two definitions of who they are supposed to be.
Where & how to watch
Mantaghe is available now on K-Time with Persian subtitles. Watch on the web, your Android TV, or your phone — no geo-blocking, no VPN required. Start a subscription and cancel anytime.