PardehEarlier Iran, different pressures
An earlier setting changes more than the clothes and the scenery. It can determine who holds power, what work people do and how freely a relationship can develop. These series place love, investigation and collective action in distinct periods of Iranian life; choose a setting through the conflict it creates.
Explore the picksStory-based viewing guidance and practical catalogue instructions; these are not scored film reviews.
A relationship in Qajar-era society and an investigation in a 1970s village enter history at different scales. In one, class and political power narrow a young artist’s choices; in the other, the rural community shapes the atmosphere around a criminal case.
Love and power in the Qajar eraDrama · Romance
In Qajar-era Iran, a young painter and calligrapher forms a relationship that brings love into conflict with class divisions and political power. The period determines what choices are open to him.
Crime · Drama
A village in 1970s Iran becomes the setting for a disturbing mystery. A succession of murders involving young women sets the investigation in motion. The period setting and rural environment shape the tone of the case.
Each premise offers a different route into an earlier Iran: an artist’s relationship, a village case or a workers’ struggle. Watch for how the social setting limits a character’s room to act. These are dramatic stories; a period setting does not make every event a historical record.
Open a title for its story overview, cast and current viewing options.
Family · Romance
A historical story of love and tragedy set in Iran during the final years of the Second World War.
Family · Drama
A group plan to rob Bank Melli in support of Mosaddegh’s national loan campaign. The robbery goes wrong, and an injury exposes disagreements that threaten their friendship.
Drama
Mahboub, the daughter of a wealthy family in old Tehran, falls in love with a carpenter’s apprentice. She rejects other suitors and challenges her family to accept Rahim, without knowing how difficult their future may become.
Comedy · Drama
Shahrokh and Morteza were born at the same maternity hospital on the same day. Years later, during the Iran–Iraq War, they meet again and enter an abandoned house, where encounters with its earlier owners draw them into strange events across different periods.
Comedy · Family
Parviz, a man struggling financially, wins a lottery ticket. The unexpected prospect of money becomes the starting point for his story.
Drama · War
At the start of the Iran–Iraq War in 1980, engineers at the Abadan oil refinery try to use equipment from its stores to repair other refineries.
Family · Sports
The story of goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand follows his difficult childhood, his first professional football contract and his progress towards the international stage. His sporting ambitions culminate in facing Cristiano Ronaldo’s penalty.
A period setting changes who holds power, what work people do and how openly people can love or argue. The two series featured above, Sorkh o Siah in the Qajar era and Yal in a 1970s village, are only the start. Pardeh's catalogue covers several distinct periods of 20th-century Iran. Here they are roughly in historical order.
Savushun is Narges Abyar's large-scale series adaptation of Simin Daneshvar's novel, one of the best-known books in modern Persian literature. It is set in Shiraz in the last years of the Second World War. Khaen Koshi (Killing a Traitor), Masoud Kimiai's film, is set around 1950. A group of men plan to rob Bank Melli, not for themselves but for Mohammad Mosaddegh's national loan campaign. Bamdad-e Khamar returns to old Tehran. The daughter of an aristocratic family falls for a carpenter's apprentice and stands up to her family until they agree.
In Sorkh Poost (The Warden), set in southern Iran in 1967, an old prison must be emptied for an airport expansion and one prisoner is missing. Khane-ye Arvah follows two men born on the same day in August 1953 whose paths cross again during the war years.
Two comedies look at that turning point. In Antique, two antique dealers find business slow after the revolution, until a shrine full of money changes everything. In Kooktel Molotov, a broke man wins a lottery just as the revolution arrives.
Palayeshgah (The Refinery) follows engineers at the Abadan refinery in 1980. Aseman-e Gharb tells the story of the pilot Ali-Akbar Shiroudi in the first days of the war. Ashk-e Hoor stays at home with a mother waiting for her son to return from the front. Az Karkheh ta Rhein follows a veteran blinded by chemical weapons who is sent to Germany for treatment. The Glass Agency brings a wounded veteran's story back to 1990s Tehran.
These are dramas, not documentaries. Where a title is based on real people, such as Shiroudi in Aseman-e Gharb or the goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand in Beyro, the title page says so. Everything else should be read as fiction set against a real period.
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