Film
The Dinner Party
Other titles called The Dinner Party: the 2020 film.
A twelve-minute Iranian film set entirely in a Tehran kitchen during an engagement party. When political chaos outside delays the cake, a perfectionist mother and her daughters watch their carefully performed civilities fracture. Intimate, tense, and mordantly funny about the performance of family and the world's intrusions into domestic life.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you enjoy compact, tightly built chamber pieces where polite small talk and a domestic setting quietly carry the weight of a larger political pressure.
Skip it if you want plot-driven momentum or characters who wander beyond their rooms, since this stays inside one kitchen and its cramped, talky tension never leaves it.
What it asks of you: Twelve minutes in a single room, with no escape from the clatter of the kitchen; attention goes to who speaks, who yields, and what gets left unsaid.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Parasite2019
A masterclass in how class tension plays out in confined spaces through gesture and ritual. Like The Dinner Party, it finds darkly comic truth in the gap between what people say and what they mean.
But It's two and a half hours and shifts genre abruptly. The tonal whiplash works brilliantly but requires patience and surrender.
Minari2021
Another film about the weight of family expectations and immigrant aspiration. It finds genuine warmth alongside the frustration, and understands how love and pressure live in the same space.
But It moves slowly and asks you to sit with uncomfortable silences. Some find its quietness emotionally distant rather than contemplative.
The Worst Person in the World2021
A portrait of a woman navigating expectation, desire, and the self she performs for others. It's funny and sad in the same breath, with brilliant supporting performances about the distance between what families see and who we are.
But It's Norwegian, subtitled, and the protagonist is self-absorbed in ways that frustrate some viewers. Her choices don't always feel sympathetic.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Dinner Party
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Stalker1979
Both understand that the real drama is internal and invisible; both find tragedy in the gap between what we want and what we can have, explored through close observation.
Tarkovsky's Soviet sci-fi meditation on desire and impossibility. It's also about people in a confined journey toward something they can never fully possess. Visually and thematically vast, it reframes what intimate cinema can be.
But It's 163 minutes of philosophical monologue and long takes. It requires an almost meditative state of patience that many find punishing rather than rewarding.
More like this (6)
Tomboy2011
A French film about identity and performance in a working-class family. It shares The Dinner Party's interest in how we perform gender and belonging within domestic spaces, with similar quiet tension.
But The ending is ambiguous and potentially unsettling. Some viewers want clearer emotional resolution than it provides.
In the Mood for Love2000
Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece about repressed feeling and ritual behaviour. Like The Dinner Party, it finds profound emotion in what people don't say, and frames intimacy through spatial arrangement.
But It's paced like a dream and prioritises visual beauty over plot. If you need narrative momentum, it will feel glacial and frustrating.
Women Talking2022
An entire film about women in a room negotiating power, truth, and what they owe each other. It trusts dialogue and performance, and finds profound stakes in domestic disagreement.
But It's deliberately theatrical and conversation-heavy. Some find the lack of external action claustrophobic rather than compelling.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days2007
A Romanian masterpiece about two women and one unbearable day. It understands how intimate relationships fracture under pressure, and finds horror in the mundane.
But It's bleak and demanding. A hotel room sequence is deliberately uncomfortable, and the film refuses to look away or offer catharsis.
High and Low1963
Kurosawa's film about class and moral responsibility. Though set across Tokyo, it shares The Dinner Party's interest in how external crises expose the fault lines in supposedly stable domestic and social hierarchies.
But It's three hours and structured like a thriller. Some find the pacing uneven, and the social commentary can feel didactic.
A Separation2011
An Iranian film about a marriage dissolving in a Tehran courtroom. It captures similar tensions between public performance and private anguish, and understands how people can be right and wrong simultaneously.
But It's emotionally exhausting. There's no clear villain, which leaves some viewers unsatisfied and morally disoriented.
People
Cast
Nazanin FarahaniNajibeh
Nafiseh ZareNiloufar
Shaghayegh ShourianZaynab- Pooneh ParsayiRahimeh
Recommended by
I Never Sang for My Father, The Argument, In a Dark, Dark Wood, My Best Friend