Director: Ebrahim Hatamikia

Cast: Fariborz Arabnia, Saeed Rad, Merila Zarei, Babak Hamidian, Mehdi Soltani

Che is a 2014 Iranian war film directed by Ebrahim Hatamikia, reconstructing two pivotal days in the life of Mostafa Chamran — the American-trained guerrilla commander who became one of the most consequential figures of Iran's Sacred Defense era — as his forces fight to hold the western city of Paveh.

What is Che HD about?

The film compresses time to follow two relentless days in Chamran's command during the early phase of the Iran-Iraq War. Trained abroad in guerrilla tactics and committed to a life of service, Chamran is shown not as a distant icon but as a man making urgent decisions under fire in the rugged terrain around Paveh. His fighters are outgunned and stretched thin; reinforcements are uncertain. Rather than mapping the full sweep of a campaign, Hatamikia plants the viewer inside a single desperate window, where leadership means weighing every resource — lives, terrain, time — against an enemy pressing hard. The film holds back the outcome of those choices, letting the moral weight of command accumulate without release.

Cast & crew

Director Ebrahim Hatamikia is Iran's foremost chronicler of the Sacred Defense, and Che sits among his most politically serious work. Fariborz Arabnia leads as Chamran, anchoring the film's emotional gravity. Saeed Rad, Merila Zarei, Babak Hamidian, and Mehdi Soltani fill out an ensemble of established Iranian actors who collectively give the supporting roles a sense of lived-in authenticity.

Context & significance

Mostafa Chamran occupies a singular place in post-revolutionary Iranian memory — an engineer who studied in the United States, joined liberation struggles in the developing world, then returned to Iran and died on the battlefield in 1981. For diaspora viewers, Chamran's biography carries particular resonance: he is a figure who moved between Western education and Islamic revolutionary commitment, a trajectory that still frames contested family conversations decades later. Hatamikia does not produce a propaganda portrait; his camera stays close to the mud, the fatigue, and the impossible arithmetic of small-unit warfare. The Paveh operation of July–August 1979 is a historical touchstone Iranian audiences recognize immediately, making Che simultaneously a personal character study and a document of a moment the community carries in its collective memory.

Where & how to watch

Che is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. No VPN is required and there is no geo-blocking — watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone. Membership is flexible and can be cancelled anytime.