Director: Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari
Cast: Shabnam Toloui, Pegah Ferydoni, Orsolya Tóth, Arita Shahrzad, Ahmad Hamed
Zanan Bedoone Mardan (Women Without Men) is a 2009 Austrian-German-Iranian drama film co-directed by Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari, adapted from Shahrnush Parsipur's celebrated novel. Set against the political upheaval of mid-twentieth-century Iran, it weaves together the lives of four women searching for freedom outside the boundaries imposed on them.
What is Zanan Bedoone Mardan about?
Tehran, summer of 1953. A military coup orchestrated with foreign backing overturns the elected government, reshaping Iran's future in ways its people cannot yet foresee. Amid that charged atmosphere, four women from different walks of life find themselves drawn to a walled orchard garden outside the city. One flees a suffocating marriage, another escapes the dangers of the street, a third seeks spiritual refuge, and the fourth carries the weight of political conviction. The garden becomes a place apart — quiet, lush, suspended from the turmoil outside — where each woman confronts what she truly wants and what the world has denied her. Their paths cross, diverge, and intertwine as the coup reaches its conclusion.
Cast & crew
The film stars Shabnam Toloui and Pegah Ferydoni, two performers well-regarded in European and Iranian cinema, alongside Arita Shahrzad, Ahmad Hamed, Bijan Daneshmand, and Navid Navid. Orsolya Tóth rounds out the principal cast. Co-director Shirin Neshat, the internationally acclaimed Iranian visual artist and filmmaker, brings her signature visual language — stark, symbolic, and deeply rooted in Persian literary tradition — to the screen.
Context & significance
For the Iranian diaspora, Zanan Bedoone Mardan occupies a special place. It draws directly from Shahrnush Parsipur's 1989 novel, a work that was banned in Iran and yet passed hand to hand among readers who understood exactly what it meant to long for a space beyond male authority. The 1953 coup is living history for many Persian-speaking families — a wound that shaped everything that followed. Neshat frames that history not through political polemic but through the intimate, surreal experiences of women whose lives are rarely the subject of official memory. The result is a film that speaks to collective grief, longing for homeland, and the particular resilience of Iranian women.
Where & how to watch
Zanan Bedoone Mardan is available on K-Time in its original Persian-language version with English subtitles. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, cancel anytime.