What happens when the stingiest man around meets a being he cannot buy, bribe, or bargain with? Rooze Fereshte, Behruz Afkhami's 1994 comedy-fantasy, pairs two giants of Iranian acting — Ezzatolah Entezami and Akbar Abdi — in a story where one fall from a rooftop knocks a miser's carefully guarded world loose.
What is Rooze Fereshte about?
The rich man at the heart of the story has money, property, and no intention of sharing either. His days revolve around protecting what he owns and squeezing more out of everyone within reach. Then a favor for a friend takes him to court, an accident sends him tumbling from a roof, and he wakes into a far stranger reality than the one he left. A jinn has entered his life, and none of the rules that governed his ledgers hold any sway over it. What follows is a running duel between a man who believes everything has a price and a supernatural companion who keeps demonstrating otherwise — a contest that gradually pulls in his habits, his household, and his hard-shelled heart.
About the cast
Ezzatolah Entezami, often called the 'Mister Actor' of Iranian cinema for a career reaching back to the stage of the 1940s, gives the miser his weight and wounded dignity. Opposite him, Akbar Abdi supplies the anarchic comic energy audiences knew from his most popular roles, and Mina Lakani completes the central trio. Entezami's control colliding with Abdi's mischief is the engine that drives the picture.
Context & significance
Behruz Afkhami made Rooze Fereshte early in a career that would later swing between romantic drama, thrillers, and satire, and it remains one of his most playful works. Iranian cinema of the mid-1990s rarely touched fantasy, which makes a mainstream comedy built around a jinn something of an outlier for its moment. The film reworks a very old storytelling tradition — the covetous man taught a lesson by an otherworldly visitor — through a distinctly Iranian household, its humor rooted in haggling, hospitality, and the terror of parting with money.
Watching Rooze Fereshte on K-Time
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