On the outskirts of Tehran a family of four are getting ready to move house; their current home is schedule for imminent demolition, and preparations have been made for them to relocate. Eldest daughter Ensi (Laleh Marzban) plans to go a step further. With the help of her mother Zinat (Rima Raminfar) she’s made arrangements to leave Iran altogether to pursue her dreams of a modelling career. Her younger sister Jannat (Elena Khakbazan) will miss her but is excited for the freedom that seems within grasp…until their prison officer father Rashid (Farhad Aslani) finds out about Ensi’s plans, and suddenly their home becomes an extension of his workplace, tensions exacerbated by the allegations that Rashid has been taking bribes at work.

Falling House is Mohsen Gharaei’s first film in six years, after he stopped pursuing his career in protest of Iran’s notoriously harsh restrictions on filmmaking. He describes his sixth film as ​“a film about lost freedom, about choices buried under fear and imposed destiny” – moreover, it’s a film about Iranian women, and the immense strength required of them by a society that continually strips them of their autonomy. While Rashid initially appears as a kind and loving patriarch who takes great pride in his work despite the constant ire of his superiors, his demeanour changes drastically once he is faced with insubordination at home. The sweet paternal figure becomes stern jailor, imprisoning first Ensi and then also Zinat and Jannat, claiming it’s for their own good. 

A tense drama plays out within the confines of their family home as the women beg for their freedom and Rashid becomes the very thing he had always despised in his workplace. The women, who banded together to help bail Rashid out of prison following the corruption charges, are struck by the irony of their situation: if they’d left him in prison, they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. 

It is evident that Gharaei means for this family home to serve as a metaphor for Iranian life more widely; Rashid, an otherwise rational man, is driven to darkness by the unmovable nature of his beliefs, blind to the suffering of his loved ones simply because it does not fit with his worldview. Yet there’s a repetitive edge to Falling House, the tension unable to really ebb and flow within a situation that only has two possible outcomes. A subplot regarding Ensi’s recent cancer diagnosis also feels superfluous to an already emotional premise; while it gives her character even more reason to desire emancipation, it adds little to an already charged dynamic. This is a fitfully arresting film with a quarter of excellent performances, but the over-engineered plot hinders its already solid premise.