What do you do when the career you were promised never arrived and your fortieth birthday is closing in? For Radha Blank, who directs and stars in The Forty-Year-Old Version, the answer is to pick up a microphone. This 2020 comedy-drama runs just over two hours and is on K-Time with a Persian dub and Persian subtitles.
What is The Forty-Year-Old Version about?
Radha is a New York playwright whose early promise has curdled into day jobs, unproduced scripts and a theatre scene that keeps asking her to flatten her voice to fit someone else's idea of what her work should be. Approaching forty with nothing to show for the past decade, she stumbles on an unexpected outlet: rap. Writing rhymes about her life gives her a directness the stage has been denying her, and she starts testing a new persona in a world that has its own rules, its own gatekeepers and no particular interest in a middle-aged newcomer. The film follows her as she moves between the two scenes, the polite theatre establishment and the rougher hip-hop circuit, uncertain which one actually wants her and which one she actually wants.
About the cast
Radha Blank puts herself at the centre of the frame, carrying the film as both its director and its lead. Peter Y. Kim, Oswin Benjamin, Reed Birney, Imani Lewis, T.J. Atoms, Welker White and Jacob Ming-Trent make up the surrounding ensemble, playing the friends, collaborators, students and industry figures who shape her choices.
Context & significance
Set in New York, The Forty-Year-Old Version arrived in 2020 as a United States production that blends comedy and drama in roughly equal parts. It belongs to a lineage of first-person films about creative people in the city, but its angle is specific: the artist in question is a woman nearing middle age, and the question is not whether she has talent but whether anyone is prepared to let her use it on her own terms. The film received a warm reception from audiences and critics alike.
Watching The Forty-Year-Old Version on Ktime
The Forty-Year-Old Version is available on K-Time with a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so you can watch it in Farsi or follow the original English with subtitles. A free K-Time account login is all you need to start watching; reading this page is open to everyone. Find it through the Farsi interface under comedy or drama.