Director: Babak Barjasteh
Cast: Hamid Khandan, Sam Gharibian, Shahed Ahmadloo,
Az Raghs ta Jonoon is a 2025 Iranian short film directed by Babak Barjasteh, running just fourteen minutes and delivering a tightly wound social thriller about how quickly celebration can collapse into suspicion, accusation, and raw conflict among people who thought they knew each other.
What is Az Raghs ta Jonoon about?
A group of friends gathers for a late-night party, all warmth and music, until the host discovers that a significant sum of cash has vanished. With no obvious culprit and no desire to let anyone walk out before the truth surfaces, the host bolts the door. What began as a social gathering pivots sharply: guests who arrived as friends are now suspects, forced to remain together under mounting pressure. Old tensions resurface, loyalties fracture, and the confined space becomes a pressure cooker as everyone starts pointing fingers. The film keeps its runtime lean and its focus razor-sharp, building dread out of ordinary social dynamics rather than any supernatural or action-heavy machinery.
Cast & crew
Director Babak Barjasteh stages the film's single-location tension with a compact ensemble. Hamid Khandan leads as a central figure navigating the charged atmosphere, while Sam Gharibian and Shahed Ahmadloo round out the core group. The brief supplies no additional filmography details for these performers, but the casting reflects the tight, character-driven logic of short-form Iranian cinema.
Context & significance
Short films occupy a vital but often overlooked corner of Iranian cinema, frequently serving as a director's proving ground and a space for bold formal experimentation that longer commercial productions rarely allow. Az Raghs ta Jonoon fits squarely into a well-established Iranian short-film tradition of claustrophobic social drama — a single night, a locked room, ordinary people pushed to their limits. For diaspora viewers, these films offer an unfiltered window into contemporary Iranian social textures: the party culture, the class anxieties, the fragile trust between friends. At fourteen minutes, the film demands nothing from your schedule and rewards you with a concentrated burst of dramatic tension that longer features sometimes struggle to sustain.
Where & how to watch
Az Raghs ta Jonoon is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. You can stream it on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no geo-blocking, no VPN required. Sign up once, cancel anytime.