For years Firouz has earned his living by falling off rooftops, rolling cars and taking punches so that famous actors never have to. Badalkaran, Mehdi Sabaghzadeh's 1997 family drama, watches what happens when the humble stuntman's carefully maintained white lie is about to walk through his front door.
What is Badalkaran about?
Firouz is a veteran stuntman — a badalkar — on Iranian film sets, doing dangerous, anonymous work while nearly everything he saves goes abroad to cover his younger brother's medical studies. Through all those years, the brother has believed something else entirely: that Firouz is a celebrated producer and director, a powerful man of the movie business. Now the brother has finished his training as a doctor and sends word that he is coming home to Iran — and not alone. His fiancée and her wealthy father are travelling with him, expecting to meet the famous filmmaker they have heard so much about. Firouz has only a short time to decide whether to confess the truth or to stage the most elaborate performance of his career, borrowing the trappings of a life he never actually lived.
About the cast
Akbar Abdi, one of the most recognisable character actors of post-revolution Iranian cinema, anchors the story, supported by Afsaneh Bayegan, a familiar face of 1990s Iranian drama. Farhad Khanmohammadi, Hassan Rezai and Masoud Valadbeigi round out the ensemble.
Context & significance
Badalkaran belongs to an affectionate strand of 1990s Iranian filmmaking: movies about the movie world itself, seen from below rather than from the premiere stage. Stunt performers — the badalkaran of the title — were the invisible workforce behind the era's action pictures, and Sabaghzadeh turns that anonymity into the engine of his story. The director had been active since the early 1980s, moving between social drama and popular entertainment, and here he blends both registers: the comedy of a staged deception and the quieter ache of a man who set aside his own ambitions for a sibling. Released in 1997, the film runs a compact 90 minutes.
Watching Badalkaran on Ktime
Badalkaran streams on K-Time with a free account login — this page is open to everyone, and signing in unlocks playback. K-Time's interface is available in Farsi, built for Persian-speaking viewers across the diaspora who want classic 1990s Iranian cinema alongside newer releases.