My Favourite Cake / Keyk-e Mahbub-e Man
Movie202498 min
Comedy · Romance
At seventy, Mahin decides that companionship is still worth taking a chance on. An ordinary wish for company becomes the reason to change her routine.
Companionship and second chances
Romance when life is already complicated
A love story does not have to begin with two young strangers meeting for the first time. It can start when someone changes a long-established routine, when a couple reconsiders its future or when affection challenges a family’s expectations. These selections approach companionship at different stages of life, so choose the kind of emotional risk you want to follow.
Explore the picksStory-based viewing guidance and practical catalogue instructions; these are not scored film reviews.
A chance at company, or a relationship reconsidered
For one evening, compare a woman’s decision to seek companionship with three couples facing changes in their relationships. One starting point is intimate and concentrated; the other lets you consider several relationships beside one another.
Open Arms / Aghush-e Baz
Movie2024Runtime not confirmed
Romance · Drama
Three couples experience different turns in their relationships. Their stories leave room to compare what people ask of love with what they are prepared to change.
When love challenges a family’s expectations
A series can stay with the distance between falling in love and building a life together. Begin at the start to follow the relationship in context, especially when money and social standing shape the choices available to the couple.
Love across class divisionsBamdad-e Khamar
Series20252 seasons available28 episodes available47–78 min episodes
Drama
Mahboub, the daughter of a wealthy family in old Tehran, falls in love with a carpenter’s apprentice. Her decision challenges her family and brings the difference between desire and a shared future into focus.
Why choose this kind of romance?
The attraction lies in the decisions around the relationship as much as in the relationship itself: changing a routine, reconsidering an attachment or challenging an expectation. These are different emotional settings, and a romance label alone does not promise a light mood or a happy ending.
More titles in this guide
Open a title for its story overview, cast and current viewing options.
A Few Cubic Meters of Love / Chand Metr Mokab Eshgh
Movie201491 min
Drama · Social drama
Abdolsalam, an Afghan migrant, lives and works at a workshop with his daughter Marona. When Saber falls in love with her, their relationship faces an uncertain future that neither the young couple nor her father can foresee.
Simple Worker Needed / Kargar Sade Niazmandim
Movie201797 min
Drama · Romance
Ghadam comes to Tehran from a smaller town looking for work. While apprenticing at Rahmat’s shop, he falls in love with Rahmat’s daughter, Mounes.
A Tale of Love / Hekayat-e Asheghi
Movie201586 min
Romance · Drama
An Iranian journalist falls in love with a survivor of the chemical attack on Halabja. Their story places love and faith alongside the struggle to preserve life in the aftermath of violence.
A Relic of the South / Yadegar-e Jonoob
Movie102 min
Family · Romance
Vahid searches for the love he has lost through a woman named Rana.
Sahulan
Movie202386 min
Social drama · Family
A border porter navigates harsh mountains while a love story struggles against superstition and damaging traditions. Social beliefs prove as difficult to cross as the landscape.
Salma and the Apple / Sib o Salma
Movie85 min
Family · Romance
After eating an apple, a young religious student sets out to find its owner and ask permission and forgiveness.
Pul o Party
Movie202498 min
Comedy · Romance
A romance contrasts people drawn to wealth, houses and cars with the possibility of being loved for oneself.
Torghozabad
Movie202392 min
Comedy · Drama
A story about lies that create new trouble instead of solving the problems they were meant to conceal.
The Pear Tree / Derakhte Golabi
Movie199895 min
Romance · Drama
Writer Mahmoud retreats to his father’s garden in Damavand to finish a long-delayed book. An old pear tree has stopped bearing fruit, and a ritual intended to revive it draws him back into memories of his adolescence.
Iranian romance is rarely simple boy-meets-girl. Family approval, class, age, migration and law all shape what a couple can do, and the best love stories use those limits as their drama. My Favourite Cake, Aghush-e Baz and Bamdad-e Khamar, featured above, are three examples. These further titles on Pardeh are grouped by what stands in the way.
Different worlds
Ezdevaj be Sabk-e Irani (Marriage, Iranian Style) pairs Shirin, a young woman with a strict, traditional father, with an American engineer who falls for her at the travel agency where she works. In Chand Metr Mokab Eshgh (A Few Cubic Meters of Love), a young Iranian worker falls in love with Marona, the daughter of an Afghan migrant who lives in the workshop. Kargar Sade Niazmandim follows Ghadam, a stubborn young worker from Azerbaijan in Tehran.
Love after loss
Hekayat-e Asheghi (A Tale of Love) begins when an Iranian photographer enters Halabja after the chemical bombing and meets Chiman, a survivor. In Yadegar-e Jonoub, Vahid looks for a lost love in Rana, a woman whose life is very different from his. In Khastegar-e Mohtaram, a man who was turned down forty years ago returns from France to look for the woman he loved.
Love against custom
In Sahulan, superstition pushes a young woman into marriage with a much older man, while the man who loves her is bound by family custom himself. Sib va Salma begins with a seminary student who eats an apple that was not his and sets out to find its owner.
Lighter options
Pul o Party is a romantic comedy about whether anyone falls for you rather than your money. Toorqvazabad follows a PhD student whose white lie about being a nuclear scientist works far too well. For an older classic, Dariush Mehrjui's The Pear Tree looks back at first love through a writer's memories of a garden in Damavand.
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