Director: Ali Tavakoli

Cast: Amin Miri, Milad Kafaei, Mohamad Hajizadeh, Mohamadreza Samiyan, Mohammad Ashkanfar

Bazsazi is a 2022 Iranian short drama film directed by Ali Tavakoli, running seventeen minutes and exploring the legal and moral weight of an unintended death inside a crumbling old factory. Through courtroom reconstruction, Tavakoli asks what guilt, memory, and justice really mean for ordinary workers.

What is Bazsazi about?

Inside a long-neglected factory, a fatal accident occurs involving one of the laborers — an event that nobody fully planned and nobody can easily explain. As authorities begin reconstructing what happened that day, witness accounts, physical evidence, and conflicting recollections are assembled piece by piece. The film follows the judicial process of recreating the sequence of events, slowly drawing out the human dimensions hidden beneath a routine workplace tragedy. Each participant carries a different version of the truth, and the court must weigh all of them. The film stays tightly focused on process and character rather than verdict, leaving space for the audience to sit with ambiguity.

Cast & crew

Director Ali Tavakoli guides a cast that includes Amin Miri, Milad Kafaei, Mohamad Hajizadeh, Mohamadreza Samiyan, Mohammad Ashkanfar, Negin Tahamtan, Saeed Naderi, and Zahra Boroomand. The ensemble covers the range of workers, witnesses, and court participants, each bringing a distinct presence to this compact, dialogue-driven short. The performances ground the procedural format in felt human experience.

Context & significance

Short films have long served as a proving ground in Iranian cinema, where directors use tight runtimes to compress social observation into its sharpest form. Bazsazi sits within a tradition of Iranian procedural drama that trusts its audience to absorb moral complexity without resolution handed to them on a plate. For diaspora viewers, this kind of story lands with particular resonance: the factory setting, the judicial bureaucracy, and the gap between institutional process and personal truth are textures familiar from Iranian daily life. The film's brevity is a strength — every scene earns its place, and the ensemble format prevents the story from resting on a single protagonist's shoulders. It is the kind of quiet, carefully made work that rewards patient watching.

Where & how to watch

Bazsazi is available now on K-Time with original Persian audio. No VPN is needed and there is no geo-blocking — watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone. Subscription is flexible with no long commitment; cancel anytime.