After a confusing interaction in downtown Tehran, a married couple seems to have found their doppelgängers.

At the age of 40, Leila has spent her entire life caring for her parents and four brothers. A family that is constantly arguing and under pressure from various debts in the face of sanctions against Iran. While her brothers are struggling to make ends meet, Leila makes a plan.

The mysterious disappearance of a kindergarten teacher during a picnic in the north of Iran is followed by a series of misadventures for her fellow travelers.

On the day before their holiday trip to Dubai, a wife who believes her husband is unfaithful enlists the help of Roohi, a young woman sent by an agency to clean the house. She asks Roohi to make an appointment and gather information at the salon of the woman she suspects. Roohi is betrothed, innocent of marital discord. Over the course of the day, she, the couple, their small son, the wife’s sister and husband, and the beautician engage in a series of exchanges, confrontations, and prevarications. Are the wife’s suspicions unwarranted; is her behavior imperiling her marriage? Acts of kindness may go awry. And the trip to Dubai?

Forced out of their apartment due to dangerous works on a neighboring building, Emad and Rana move into a new flat in the center of Tehran. An incident linked to the previous tenant will dramatically change the young couple’s life.

Akbar has just turned eighteen. He has been held in a rehabilitation centre for committing murder at the age of sixteen when he was condemned to death. Legally speaking, he had to reach the age of eighteen so that the conviction could be carried out. Now, Akbar is transferred to prison to await the day of his execution. A’la, a friend of Akbar, who himself has undergone imprisonment for burglary, soon after his release tries desperately to gain the consent of Akbar’s plaintiff so as to stop the execution

This twisted Iranian narrative follows a mysterious couple from Tehran as they distribute large bags of money in an impoverished mountain border town. Beginning as a black comedy, the film’s mood transforms as the games played by Kaveh (director Mani Haghighi) and Leyla (Taraneh Alidoosti) become increasingly perverse, as they find inventive ways of humiliating the recipients of the cash. The immorality of the central characters is at times sickening, and their chain of lies is often as puzzling to us as they are to the townsfolk depicted onscreen. What is the relationship between the pair and why are they giving away money to the needy? Modest Reception has no easy answers nor pat resolutions – instead Haghighi takes the viewer on an intriguing ride into the dark recesses of the human spirit.