Director: Maryam Keshavarz
A heart transplant brings a sprawling family back together in New York City, and with the reunion comes a long-buried secret that reshapes a mother-daughter relationship.
What is The Persian Version about?
When the family patriarch needs emergency heart surgery, relatives converge from across the country and the years of distance between them start to show. At the center of the gathering is a strained bond between an estranged mother and daughter, whose relationship has cooled over decisions and misunderstandings neither has fully explained to the other. As the family waits through the crisis together, old routines and old arguments resurface, but so does a hidden piece of the family's history that neither woman expected to confront. The film moves between present-day tension and the past that shaped it, tracing how a single secret rippled through decades of choices, and ultimately pushing mother and daughter toward a version of honesty they'd both been avoiding.
Cast & crew
Layla Mohammadi leads as the daughter, opposite Niousha Noor as her mother, with Kamand Shafieisabet, Bella Warda, and Bijan Daneshmand rounding out the extended family. Tom Byrne appears in a supporting role. Writer-director Maryam Keshavarz balances the ensemble comedy of a crowded household with quieter, more intimate scenes between the two leads.
Context & significance
Set largely within a diaspora family navigating generational and cultural gaps in the United States, the story uses the hospital waiting room as a pressure cooker that forces conversations the characters had been putting off for years. Its structure moves fluidly between comedic set pieces involving the extended family and a more dramatic thread tracking the mother's earlier life, giving the film a tonal range that shifts between humor and quiet reckoning.
Where & how to watch
The Persian Version is available on K-Time with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, part of a catalog built specifically for the Iranian diaspora with a fully Farsi interface. Browsing this page costs nothing; watching the film requires signing into a K-Time account.