A sealed-bid tender, a marriage in ruins, and a rival who seems to know every move in advance: Ideh Asli drops an Iranian engineer into a contest where winning the contract could cost him everything he still values. Azita Moguie directs this 2019 mystery-thriller led by Bahram Radan.
What is Ideh Asli about?
Iran and Spain are preparing a joint development venture on Hendurabi, a small island in the Persian Gulf, and the contract is lucrative enough to pull every major engineering firm into the bidding. Saeed Parsa, a capable engineer whose recent divorce has left his personal life in pieces, finds himself at the center of the tender process. As the deadline nears, confidential information starts moving in ways it should not, loyalties inside the competing companies quietly shift, and Saeed is forced to work out who is bending the auction — and why the scheme keeps circling back toward the people closest to him.
About the cast
Bahram Radan, one of the most recognisable leading men of his generation in Iranian cinema, anchors the film. Opposite him, Merila Zare'i carries the story's emotional weight, while Pejman Jamshidi completes the central trio in a guarded, hard-to-read register that keeps the mystery turning.
Context & significance
Ideh Asli belongs to the late-2010s wave of Iranian commercial cinema that traded domestic melodrama for corporate intrigue, moving its characters between corporate boardrooms and the Persian Gulf coast. Director Azita Moguie stages that world with an eye for polished surfaces and hidden motives, and the film's mix of star casting and puzzle-box plotting was aimed squarely at a broad theatrical audience rather than the festival circuit.
Watching Ideh Asli on K-Time
Ideh Asli streams on K-Time, the Persian-focused platform built for the Iranian diaspora, with a fully Farsi interface. This page is free for anyone to read; to press play, just sign in with your K-Time account and continue on your TV, phone, or laptop wherever in the world you live.