Director: Morteza Alizadeh
Cast: Elnaz Shakerdoust, Navid Pourfaraj, Gelare Abbasi, Soroush Sehhat, Pejman Jamshidi
Bi Badan is a 2024 Iranian drama-crime film directed by Morteza Alizadeh, drawing on a widely documented criminal case from the 1990s that resurfaced repeatedly in Iranian public discourse. The film reconstructs the events surrounding the murder of Ghazaleh Shakur and the protracted legal proceedings that followed, running 90 minutes.
What is Bi Badan about?
A young woman named Ghazaleh Shakur is killed, and the accused is Arman Abdul Ali, a man whose case would pass through Iran's judicial system multiple times over the years — from initial hearings to repeated appeals and stays of execution — before reaching a final verdict. The film traces this prolonged legal ordeal, examining the perspectives of those caught inside a process that stretched across years. Rather than sensationalizing the violence, Bi Badan focuses on the emotional and procedural weight borne by families, witnesses, and institutions as the case moves through successive stages of Iranian criminal law. Questions of justice, grief, and the slow machinery of the courts shape the narrative.
Cast & crew
The film features Elnaz Shakerdoust and Navid Pourfaraj in the central roles, supported by Gelare Abbasi, Soroush Sehhat, Pejman Jamshidi, and Payam Ahmadinia. Morteza Alizadeh, the director, works primarily within Iranian social and genre cinema, and here assembles a cast whose collective stage and screen experience grounds the courtroom-adjacent drama in recognizable human detail.
Context & significance
For Iranian diaspora viewers, Bi Badan speaks to a case that was widely covered in Persian-language media throughout the 1990s and 2000s, making it familiar by name even to audiences who left Iran years ago. The film belongs to a tradition of Iranian social-realist crime drama that uses real events as a lens for examining institutional process, familial pain, and the long shadow that unresolved cases cast over everyone involved. It is not a procedural in the Western sense; it is slower, more interested in the atmosphere of waiting and uncertainty that defines prolonged legal proceedings in any society.
Where & how to watch
Bi Badan is available on K-Time in its original Persian audio. No Persian subtitles or dubbing are included. You can watch on your web browser, TV, or phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, and cancel anytime.