Director: Hossein Kondori

Cast: Baran Kosari, Reza Behbudi, bahareh katoozi

Shanel is a 2018 Iranian drama film directed by Hossein Kondori, following a single mother navigating the pressures of caregiving and circumstance as she tries to hold her small family together in conditions that leave little room for error.

What is Shanel about?

At the center of Shanel is a young woman who is raising her child largely on her own, dependent on her work as a nurse to keep them afloat. When a chain of unforeseen events begins to close in around her — born partly from circumstance and partly from choices she did not fully anticipate — she finds herself pulled between duty, survival, and the weight of secrets she was not prepared to carry. The film builds its tension quietly, placing its camera close to the rhythms of her daily life before letting the complications accumulate. The story is less interested in dramatic rupture than in the slow pressure that ordinary hardship applies to a woman already giving everything she has.

Cast & crew

Baran Kosari, one of the most consistently compelling actresses working in Iranian cinema, carries the film in the lead role. Her co-stars Reza Behbudi and Bahareh Katoozi fill out the small ensemble around her. Director Hossein Kondori shapes the material with restraint, keeping the focus on character over plot mechanics.

Context & significance

Iranian social dramas built around working women and the weight of single parenthood have formed one of the more distinctive veins of Iranian cinema over the past two decades. Shanel fits within that tradition — intimate in scale, attentive to the texture of everyday difficulty, and centered on a protagonist whose resilience is tested not by grand confrontation but by accumulation. For diaspora viewers who have watched family members navigate similar conditions of economic strain and social expectation, the film carries a particular resonance. It asks no easy questions and offers no easy answers, which is precisely what gives it credibility.

Where & how to watch

Shanel is available on K-Time with its original Persian audio. You can watch on the web, your TV, or your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, no extra download required. Start a subscription and cancel anytime.