Chess of the Wind 1976

In an aristocratic family, the matriarch Khanom Bozorg dies, leaving her wheelchair-bound daughter Aghdas, Fakhri Khorvash, to mourn in the expansive Moshir ad-Dowleh Mansion. She shares the house with her mother’s widower, Hadji Amoo, Mohammadali Keshavarz, and his two nephews, Ramezan, Akbar Zanjanpour, and Shaban, Shahram Golchin. Ramezan is engaged to Aghdas, yet his interest feels grounded more in her wealth than in affection, while Aghdas is cared for by a devoted maid, Kanizak, Shohreh Aghdashloo, who also forms a budding friendship with Shaban. Throughout the film, intercut scenes of washerwomen gossip illuminate the backstory of Aghdas and Hadji Amoo, threading together whispers of wealth, status, and entitlement.

Both Aghdas and Hadji Amoo believe the house should rightfully belong to them, and soon a plan forms around the inheritance. One day, Aghdas and Kanizak burn the deeds to the house, erasing Hadji Amoo’s name from the documents and striking at the heart of the old man’s claim. What follows are tense confrontations between stepfather and stepdaughter, as pressure and paranoia mount. Aghdas contemplates murder and lets Ramezan know of her intention, setting in motion a deadly scheme that blends fear, calculation, and power.

As Hadji Amoo prays in his chamber, Aghdas is wheeled in by Kanizak and strikes him on the head with a silver flail. The blows knock him down, and the two women, along with Ramezan, drag the body to the cellar, where it is secreted away in a bottomless jar with plans to dissolve it later in nitric acid on Aghdas’s orders. The murder is staged within the walls of the mansion, a grim accounting of control and consequence that reshapes every relationship inside the house.

Days later, two creditors of Hadji Amoo arrive with a police commissar, pressing for the debt he owed. Aghdas feigns ignorance of Hadji Amoo’s whereabouts, but the commissar insists he has recently seen him, creating a moment of possible exposure. Kanizak and Ramezan lead the investigators to the cellar, where the jars are examined but the missing body remains elusive, and the pair depart with unanswered questions and a growing sense of danger.

Aghdas’s fear intensifies as she becomes convinced Hadji Amoo may still be alive. A traveling musical troupe claims to have seen him in public, a rumor that unsettles her further and leaves her physically ill. Kanizak persuades Aghdas to grant her a short departure from the mansion to visit a nearby holy site, hoping the absence will ease the mounting tension. Yet, alone in her room at night, Aghdas hears the unidentifiable laughter echoing from the cellar. She retrieves an antique pistol from a drawer and descends to the basement, where she discovers Hadji Amoo and Kanizak bathing together. In a final, desperate act, she shoots Hadji Amoo and collapses from a heart attack, leaving the mystery of the body unresolved and the house prevailing in its silence.

With Hadji Amoo dead, Kanizak and Shaban sketch a plan to live off the inheritance together, and it seems they may have orchestrated much of the earlier deception to secure their futures. Yet the alliance frays when Kanizak learns that Shaban does not intend to marry her. Their confrontation upstairs exposes a rift in their scheme, and when Ramezan bursts into the scene, he discovers the exposed truth of betrayal: he shoots Shaban, furious at the double-cross.

In the film’s final moment, Kanizak leaves the mansion behind, accompanied by only a young boy and Aghdas’s elderly nanny, while the camera sweeps outward to the city beyond the mansion walls. The frame lingers on the silence of the house and the distant life of the city, suggesting that power and greed have outlived even the intrigues that defined the family’s fate.