Years ago, Iranian director and writer Safi Yazdanian read Gabriel García Márquez’s “The Autumn of the Patriarch.” One line from the narrator’s monologue to his beloved lingered in his mind, carrying a poetic resonance. Years later, while writing a screenplay, that line resurfaced from memory and became the title of his film: “What’s the Time in Your World?” (2014)
This last sentence is the key to entering the world of the film—a world where time and love are deeply entwined and the boundary between dream and reality dissolve. With “What’s the Time in Your World?”, Yazdanian creates not merely a romantic narrative, but a poetic experience of time and nostalgia—an experience in which love becomes the language of the world and nostalgia its heartbeat.
In his first feature film, Yazdanian treats cinema not as a tool for representing reality, but as a medium for reconstructing “sense.” In this world, time is neither linear nor rigid; it behaves like a poem, taking on new meaning each time it is experienced.
The woman at the center of the story, Goli, played by Leila Hatami, returns to Iran from France, perhaps seeking a piece of herself in the rain-soaked soil of Gilan province in the north. Yet past and present are so interwoven that there is no turning back. In Yazdanian’s world, time is a circle, endlessly bringing lovers back to their starting point.
On the surface, the film tells the story of an old love between Goli and Farhad (Ali Mosaffa), but at its core, it is a meditation on the nature of unrequited love and the patience that transforms into myth. Farhad exists between fantasy and reality, between silence and presence—a man who gives meaning to love not through words, but through being. He is no longer just a lover; he becomes love itself.
The film’s poetry lies not in words, but in its images. Cinematographer Homayun Payvar, with a soft and sensual camera, captures the humidity in the air, the scent of rain, and composes a melody from the fog and cool colors of northern Iran. When Goli and Farhad walk through the Rasht market, the smell of fish and fresh garlic permeates the air; and when Farhad places an orange peel on the stove, its warmth awakens the viewer’s olfactory memory.
The film is filled with frames that transform the beauty of rain and fog into poetry. Meanwhile, Christophe Rezai’s music, as an extension of emotion and silence, adds a new layer of tenderness to the film’s texture, completing its poetic essence.
Yazdanian, like a nostalgic poet, looks back not with longing, but with affection. He does not simply celebrate memory—he inhabits it. In this world, Bandar Anzali and Paris are linked as if love knows no borders. A song in Gilaki blends with a French accent, and this cultural fusion becomes a metaphor for the characters’ fluid identities. Goli wanders between East and West, between staying and leaving, between fantasy and reality—and it is this wandering that forms the source of the film’s poetry.
In the final sequence, when Farhad lies on the table and quietly says, “It was worth it,” the entire weight of the world is condensed into a single sentence: patience, affection, fatigue, and hope. It is as if love, after centuries of waiting, has finally found a voice.
“What’s the Time in Your World?” is not a cinema of narrative; it is a cinema of feeling—a cinema where poetry flows in every look, every pause, and every raindrop.
