A Respectable Family

Yek Khanévadéh-e Mohtaram

Iranian cinema delivers another jolting piece of suspense and social commentary with this gripping tale of a college professor returning to confront his family after 22 years abroad.

Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start of the film at the box office at each venue.


Image gallery

  • Director-Screenwriter Massoud Bakhshi
  • Producer Mohammad Afarideh, Jacques Bidou, Marianne Dumoulin
  • With Babak Hamidian, Mehrdad Sedighian, Mehran Ahmadi
  • Iran-France 2012
  • 90 mins
  • Sales Pyramide International

Fresh from its triumph at this year’s Academy Awards with Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, Iranian cinema returns with another gripping piece of suspense and social commentary in Massoud Bakhshi’s directorial debut A Respectable Family. The films follows Arash, a college professor returning to Iran after 22 years abroad. He soon becomes mired in the country’s seemingly interminable bureaucracy. Complicating proceedings are Arash’s somewhat loathsome family, including his estranged dying war-profiteer father as well as an immoral half-brother and nephew who are bent on stealing the family fortune. Into this tableau, Bakhshi weaves haunting memories of the trauma of the Iran-Iraq war and of the hundreds of thousands of young men killed during that conflict. The end result is a gripping, claustrophobic thriller of the highest order.
Ali Jaafar

Director statement

I belong to the generation that lived through the eight long and deadly years of the Iran-Iraq war. Today this generation represents three quarters of the country. Iran has one of the youngest populations in the world – an educated youth full of curiosity and a desire for life. A youth which dreams of a tolerant Iran, open to the rest of the world. To me, Iran is impossible to grasp without taking the history of the last 30 years into account. I didn’t make up the story of A Respectable Family, it is a true story – the story of my childhood after the 1979 revolution, my teenage years during the war and of my experience today in Tehran.
Massoud Bakhshi

Director biography

Born in Tehran, Iran, Massoud Bakhshi earned his high school diploma in photography and cinema (1990) and graduated in agricultural engineering (1995). He later studied filmmaking in Italy (1999) and cultural financing in France (2005). He has worked as a film critic, screenwriter and producer. His documentary Tehran Has no more Pomegranates! won him two major Best Director awards in Iran, and was named Best Documentary of its year; while his ‘modern Cain and Abel’, A Respectable Family, premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes this year.

Filmography

1999 Cine Citta [doc s]; Shenasaeiye Yek Zan (Identification of a Woman) [doc s]
2001 Vaghti Behrang Ayoumi re Molaghat Mikonad (When Behrang Meets Ayoumi) [doc s]
2003 Namaze Baran (Praying for the Rain) [s]
2004 Panjerehay-E-Gomshodeh (Lost Windows) [doc]
2006 Tehran anar nadarad (Tehran Has no more Pomegranates!) [doc]
2008 Bag Dad Bar Ber [doc s]
2010 Ghaliye Iroonie Maa (Our Persian Rug) [doc]
2012 Yek Khanévadéh-e Mohtaram (A Respectable Family)