Director: Rohollah Hejazi

Cast: Saed Soheili, Sareh Bayat, Alireza Mirsalari

Otaghe Tarik (Dark Room) is a 2019 Iranian drama film written, directed, and produced by Rohollah Hejazi, starring Saed Soheili, Sareh Bayat, and Alireza Mirsalari. The film examines a married couple at a crossroads, exploring the quiet fractures that accumulate inside a relationship over time.

What is Otaghe Tarik about?

Farhad and Haleh are a couple who believe they have settled into the rhythms of their shared life — until a shift in their circumstances forces both of them to confront questions they had long pushed aside. As a new chapter opens between them, old tensions surface in unexpected ways. What unfolds is less a story of dramatic crisis than a patient, close-up observation of how two people re-examine who they are to each other when the familiar structures around them begin to loosen. The film resists easy resolution, letting its characters sit with their uncertainty rather than rushing toward comfort.

Cast & crew

Director Rohollah Hejazi also served as writer and producer, maintaining singular creative control over the project. Sareh Bayat, one of the most respected actresses in contemporary Iranian cinema, brings her characteristic emotional precision to the role of Haleh. Saed Soheili and Alireza Mirsalari round out the central ensemble, grounding the domestic drama in recognizable human detail.

Context & significance

Iranian social dramas of this kind — intimate, dialogue-driven, set almost entirely within domestic spaces — represent a strong tradition in post-revolution Persian cinema. For diaspora audiences, these films carry a particular charge: they depict the emotional architecture of family life that many viewers left behind or carry with them across borders. Otaghe Tarik fits squarely within this lineage, offering a portrait of middle-class Tehran couplehood that feels neither idealized nor sensationalized. The title itself, meaning 'dark room,' signals an interior world — a space where things are revealed slowly, through accumulated small moments rather than sudden confrontation.

Where & how to watch

Otaghe Tarik is available on K-Time with Persian audio. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no extra download needed, no geo-blocking, cancel anytime.