A cramped motel room, two old friends, and a truth neither of them tells the same way — Nekbat is a 2024 Iranian stage production, captured on camera at feature length, directed by Pouya Saeidi and performed by Kazem Sayahi, Mojtaba Pirzadeh and Setareh Pesyani.
What is Nekbat about?
John, an aspiring filmmaker, has finally caught a break: his movie has been accepted at a festival in Lansing, and he travels there for the screening. Word reaches Vince, a friend from his university years, who decides to make the trip himself — to see John again, and to see the film that carries pieces of both their pasts. Their reunion unfolds almost entirely inside a small, worn motel room, where catching up slowly gives way to something harder. Each man carries his own version of what once happened between them, and as the night wears on, those versions collide. The confined setting turns every pause and every glance into part of the drama.
About the cast
The three-person cast draws from Iran's contemporary theatre and cinema scene. Kazem Sayahi and Mojtaba Pirzadeh carry the central confrontation between the two friends, trading long stretches of charged dialogue, while Setareh Pesyani — a member of one of Iran's best-known acting families — completes the ensemble. Performances of this kind live or die on chemistry, and the staging keeps all three actors in close quarters for most of the running time.
Context & significance
Recorded stage plays have become a distinct strand of Iranian screen culture, letting productions that ran in Tehran playhouses reach audiences far beyond a single season of performances. Nekbat belongs to that strand: it runs 94 minutes, was released in 2024, and preserves director Pouya Saeidi's staging for viewers who could never have attended in person. For Iranians abroad, filmed theatre of this kind is one of the few ways to follow the country's lively stage scene from thousands of kilometres away, with the original Persian-language performances intact.
Watching Nekbat on Ktime
Nekbat is available to stream on K-Time — reading this page requires nothing, and watching takes only a free account login. The platform serves the Persian-speaking diaspora with a Farsi-language interface across TV, web and mobile, which makes browsing Iran's theatre recordings as straightforward as picking a movie.