Director: Pejman Vaseghi

Cast: Amir Tavasoli, Nastaran Ebrahimzadeh, Pejman Vaseghi

Risheh is a 2019 Iranian family-social drama directed by Pejman Vaseghi, exploring the inner world of a pottery workshop apprentice who is perpetually caught between waking life and vivid musical and literary reveries — a quiet, introspective film about the fragile boundary between imagination and reality.

What is Risheh about?

At the center of the story is a young man who spends his days shaping clay in a pottery workshop yet cannot keep his mind anchored to the present. He drifts, involuntarily, into an internal world saturated with music and literary imagery. Those around him wonder whether his wandering mind signals a deeper psychological condition. Doctors are consulted; opinions diverge. Meanwhile, the man carries a deeply personal concern: he is desperate to see his child, who is recovering from surgery. As the line between his conscious desires and his subconscious landscape blurs further, the film quietly asks how much of ourselves we can lose before we are no longer recognizable — to others or to ourselves.

Cast & crew

Director Vaseghi also appears in front of the camera alongside Amir Tavasoli and Nastaran Ebrahimzadeh. Vaseghi takes on a dual creative role, shaping both the film's visual language and its emotional register through his performance. Tavasoli and Ebrahimzadeh bring grounded, understated energy to the human relationships that anchor the story's more dreamlike sequences.

Context & significance

Iranian social-family cinema has long used the texture of everyday working-class life — workshops, family separations, quiet domestic crises — as a lens for examining psychological and emotional depth. Risheh (meaning 'root' in Farsi) fits within this tradition, reaching toward questions of identity, mental health, and parental love that resonate strongly with Iranian diaspora audiences who often navigate their own questions of belonging and connection across distance. For Persian-speaking viewers abroad, films like this offer a window into contemporary Iranian life that is neither propagandistic nor sensationalized — just human.

Where & how to watch

Risheh is available to stream on K-Time. The film is in original Persian audio. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, and you can cancel anytime.