Director: Reza Dadooi
Cast: Shahab Hosseini, Amin Hayaei, Lale Marzban, Mina Sadati, Bahare Kianafshar
Aban is a 2025 Iranian drama series directed by Reza Dadooi, weaving together themes of technology, financial pressure, and fractured relationships as it follows a brilliant AI specialist caught between a crushing debt and the threat of imprisonment.
What is Aban about?
Aban is a gifted software engineer whose algorithm for predicting profitable moves in financial markets once made him indispensable to a powerful investor. When that partnership sours, Aban is left holding a staggering financial obligation with a ticking clock attached. Every choice he makes to resolve the situation pulls him deeper into a web of competing loyalties — family, former allies, and rivals who each have their own stake in how the story ends. The series unfolds across personal and professional arenas, asking how far a man will bend his principles when prison is the alternative.
Cast & crew
Shahab Hosseini leads the ensemble, bringing the quiet intensity he is known for in Iranian prestige drama. Amin Hayaei, Lale Marzban, Mina Sadati, Bahare Kianafshar, Reza Akhlaghirad, Mirsaeed Molavian, and Manouchehr Zendeh Del round out a cast that spans multiple generations of recognizable Iranian television and cinema talent. Director Reza Dadooi shapes a thriller-inflected drama from this experienced ensemble.
Context & significance
Iranian prestige television has increasingly turned to contemporary anxieties — financial precarity, algorithmic power, and the blurry ethics of the digital economy — as dramatic material. Aban sits squarely in that wave, offering diaspora viewers a story that feels rooted in the pressures familiar to urban professional Iran while resonating with anyone who has watched tech promise collide with human consequence. For Persian-speaking audiences abroad, the series also carries the pleasure of watching one of Iran's most celebrated film actors, Shahab Hosseini, work within the serial format across a drama that prioritises character over spectacle.
Where & how to watch
Aban is available on K-Time in its original Persian audio. Stream it on the web at ktime.app, on your Android TV or phone, with no geo-blocking and no VPN required. Start a subscription and cancel anytime.