Kaveh Mousavi’s Top 10 Iranian Films

8. The Tenants (1986) – Dariush Mehrjui

The only outright comedy on this list, The Tenants is successful on many fronts, first of all as a comedy. This film is hilarious. Its humor is absurd and weird, but it works, oh boy it works. I laughed a lot watching it.

The story is about an apartment complex whose real owner is unknown. The steward wants to steal the house. While many people fight over its ownership, the old building crumbles more and more. The tenants (who know the steward is not the real owner of the house) attempt to fix it, but the steward tries to stop them. The neighbors engage in petty and hilarious fights as the building collapses around them.

Every Iranian could see how this movie is a symbolic and biting satire of Iranian society. But you the Western reader can enjoy it, too: greed and blind partisanship are human vices, and the local is the universal.