Director: Asghar Farhadi
Cast: Bérénice Bejo, Ali Mosaffa, Tahar Rahim, Pauline Burlet, Elyes Aguis
The Past is a 2013 French-Iranian drama film directed by Asghar Farhadi, starring Bérénice Bejo and Ali Mosaffa. A portrait of family fracture across two cultures, the film unfolds in Paris as buried secrets from an earlier chapter of a marriage resurface with quiet but devastating force.
What is The Past about?
Ahmad returns to Paris after four years away, summoned by his estranged French wife Marie who needs him to finalize their divorce papers. What he expected to be a brief administrative visit becomes something far more complicated. Marie has moved on, sharing her home with a new partner and his children. Yet the household is unsettled — her teenage daughter Lucie is withdrawn and hostile in ways Ahmad cannot immediately understand. As he tries to reconnect and be useful, he begins pulling at threads that lead back to an incident nobody has fully reckoned with. Farhadi builds his story through overlapping accounts and half-disclosed truths, withholding judgment even as the moral weight on every character grows heavier.
The K-Time take
Farhadi operates with the precision of a playwright here, constructing a drama in which no character is simply right or wrong. Bejo delivers a performance of controlled anguish, and Mosaffa brings a restrained dignity that anchors the film's emotional core. The Past is quieter and more interior than A Separation, but equally relentless in its moral rigor.
Cast & crew
Director Asghar Farhadi, who earned international recognition for A Separation, brings the same moral complexity to this French-language production. Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) leads as Marie, with Iranian actor Ali Mosaffa as Ahmad. Tahar Rahim, Pauline Burlet, Sabrina Ouazani, and Babak Karimi round out a cast that navigates the film's shifting emotional terrain with precision.
Context & significance
For Persian-speaking viewers abroad, The Past holds a particular resonance. Farhadi, one of the most celebrated Iranian filmmakers of his generation, transplants his signature moral architecture to Paris — a city many diaspora Iranians know firsthand. The film speaks directly to the experience of living between cultures, of relationships stretched across countries and years, and of the way old decisions can quietly hollow out a new life. It won Bérénice Bejo the Best Actress prize at Cannes 2013 and confirmed Farhadi's place in world cinema alongside his earlier work.
Where & how to watch
The Past is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing. Stream directly in your browser, on your Android TV or phone — no extra download, no VPN, no geo-blocking. Subscribe once and cancel anytime.