Koja bebinam Dashtan Ya Nadashtan — where can I watch this film online?

You can stream it on K-Time. No VPN is required, it works in Canada, the US, Europe, and Australia, and you can cancel your subscription anytime.

Is this filme irani made by Niki Karimi?

Yes. Dashtan Ya Nadashtan was both written and directed by Niki Karimi, making it her directorial debut. She is also known internationally as a leading actress in Iranian cinema.

Does the film have English subtitles or Persian dub?

The film is presented in its original Persian audio. English subtitle availability may vary; check the K-Time player for current subtitle options when you start watching.

Dashtan Ya Nadashtan

Name: Dashtan Ya Nadashtan
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2001
Duration: 45 min
Cast: Niki Karimi

Director: Niki Karimi

Cast: Niki Karimi

Dashtan Ya Nadashtan is a 2001 Iranian documentary film directed by Niki Karimi, marking her debut behind the camera. At 45 minutes, it is an intimate portrait of Iranian women who long to become mothers yet remain without children — a quiet, searching look at unfulfilled longing and the weight of societal expectation.

What is Dashtan Ya Nadashtan about?

The film turns its gaze on fleeting moments in the everyday lives of women who share a common, unspoken grief: the desire for motherhood that has not been realized. Rather than building toward a dramatic conclusion, the documentary accumulates impressions — glances, gestures, silences — that together reveal the emotional interior of women who exist at the margins of a conversation society rarely holds openly. Karimi gives her subjects space to speak without intrusion, allowing their words and pauses to carry equal significance. The result is a film that feels less like a report and more like an act of listening, refusing easy answers while honoring the complexity of each individual experience.

Cast & crew

Niki Karimi, one of Iranian cinema's most recognized actresses, stepped into the director's chair for the first time with this project. Her experience performing in front of the camera for directors such as Abbas Kiarostami gave her a sensitive eye for the unguarded moment, and that sensibility shapes every frame of this debut documentary.

Context & significance

Iranian cinema of the late 1990s and early 2000s produced a remarkable wave of films centered on women's inner lives — often working within tight thematic and formal constraints to say things the wider culture preferred to leave unspoken. Dashtan Ya Nadashtan belongs to that tradition. For diaspora audiences, it serves as a reminder of the silent negotiations Iranian women have long carried: between personal desire and social duty, between what is wished for and what is possible. The documentary's restraint is itself a statement, and its subject — voluntary or involuntary childlessness — remains as quietly urgent today as it was when the film was made.

Where & how to watch

Dashtan Ya Nadashtan is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone with no VPN needed and no geo-blocking. Subscribe and cancel anytime.