Autumn 1980. Iraqi forces have crossed the border and shells are falling on Abadan — yet inside the city's radio station, a group of young staffers decide the broadcast must go on. Mehrdad Khoshbakht's Abadan 11 (2020) dramatises that decision, turning a wartime radio studio into the film's front line.
What is Abadan 11 about?
As the invasion begins, most institutions in Abadan are evacuating or falling apart. At the local radio station, a handful of young employees — technicians, announcers, a producer — choose to stay behind. Their equipment is aging, their building sits inside the shelling radius, and every broadcast day has to be improvised from whatever survives the night. Still, the transmissions continue: news, music, messages for separated families, and above all a voice telling the people of a besieged city that they have not been abandoned. The story moves day by day with the group as the bombardment closes in and staying on air demands more of them each morning.
About the cast
Alireza Kamali leads the ensemble alongside Mohammad Hassan Madjooni and Nader Soleimani. The station's team spans two generations, and the film lets its older hands steady the younger staffers, whose improvised energy keeps the broadcast alive from one morning to the next. Director Mehrdad Khoshbakht keeps the scale intimate — one building, one team — rather than staging the war as spectacle.
Context & significance
The Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980 opened an eight-year war, and the siege of Abadan during its first months remains one of the conflict's defining chapters. Iranian cinema has returned to this period many times; Abadan 11 belongs to the strand that watches civilians and city institutions rather than soldiers at the front. Released in 2020 with a 94-minute runtime, it met a solid, unshowy reception and brings this early chapter of the war to viewers who may know it only through family stories. The radio-station setting gives it an unusual vantage point: the war is mostly heard — sirens, static, distant explosions — before it is ever seen.
Watching Abadan 11 on K-Time
Abadan 11 streams on K-Time in its original Persian. The page you are reading is open to everyone; playback needs a K-Time account login and nothing more. For diaspora viewers, the platform's Farsi interface keeps the experience close to home — fitting for a film about a broadcast that refused to fall silent.