Director: Travis Burgess
Hayseed opens with a body and closes with a town's buried history laid bare, threading a 2023 mystery through the fading industrial streets of a Rust Belt community.
What is Hayseed about?
After a local reverend is found dead, a retired detective is pulled back into work he thought he'd left behind. What starts as a single, troubling case widens into something larger, as old business dealings, personal debts and long-standing grudges among the town's residents surface one by one. Rather than a straightforward whodunit, the film uses the investigation to peel back layers of small-town corruption, letting the detective's search for answers double as a portrait of a community running out of options.
Cast & crew
Bill Sage leads as the retired detective, with Ismenia Mendes, Jack Falahee, Nolan North, Caitlin Carver, Kathryn Morris, Amy Hargreaves and Marta Piekarz filling out the town's residents and suspects. Director Travis Burgess lets the film's 107-minute runtime breathe, favoring patient character work over quick reveals as the case unfolds.
Context & significance
Set and produced in the United States, Hayseed belongs to a strand of crime cinema that treats economic decline as part of the mystery itself, using a fading Rust Belt setting to explain why old secrets have stayed buried so long. The corruption at the center of the story is presented as a product of circumstance and desperation as much as individual wrongdoing, which gives the investigation a grounded, unglamorous feel rather than a stylized thriller tone.
Where & how to watch
Hayseed is available on K-Time with a Farsi dub, though it currently doesn't carry Persian subtitles. The film's page can be read for free, and watching it only requires signing in with a K-Time account. K-Time's Farsi-first design is built with the Iranian diaspora in mind, making the dub track easy to find and switch on from the film's watch page.