I saw this film onboard the Qatar Airways flight to USA. Night Shift (Shift-e Shab) is an Iranian film directed by a famous Iranian actress Niki Karimi. The story happens in Tehran, a city I had seen earlier in another Iranian film Taxi (2015) where Director Jafar Panahi had captured a city and its soul from the insides of a Taxi. In Night Shift we see the struggles of a wife living in a conservative society trying hard to understand why her husband is missing and then saving him.
Farzad (played by Mohammad Reza Foroutan) an accounts officer in a respectable firm in Tehran is living in an upscale apartment with his wife Nahid (played by Leila Zare) and their small daughter. Suddenly Farzad becomes reclusively, comes home extremely late every day; Nahid senses something’s wrong and initially assumes he is having an affair and is trying to kill/harm her. The couple couldn’t have any meaningful conversation and how much ever Nahid tries Farzad doesn’t open. After which Farzad doesn’t come home at all. Nahid turns to seek help from Farzad coworkers and learns he has been fired from his job. Nahid then pieces together the puzzle of what’s the problem that her husband is going through, eventually solving it with the help of her brother-in-law.
Director Niki Karimi has given a screenplay that flows naturally, all the characters have played their parts realistically portraying what a woman goes through in those tough times when she doesn’t have her husband by her side, and she is the one who must save him. To get a peek into the lives of ordinary people in Iran, this film is a good window, I liked it.
Night Shift (2015)