Director: Mehdi Rahmani
Cast: Neda Jebraeili, Mansour Shahbazi, Mohammad Ali Najafian
Karte Parvaz is a 2017 Iranian drama film directed by Mehdi Rahmani, running 88 minutes. Set against a backdrop of economic desperation, the story follows a woman pushed to the edge by financial hardship, whose fateful choice draws her into a world of danger she cannot fully anticipate.
What is Karte Parvaz about?
Neda is a young Iranian woman struggling under the crushing weight of debt and financial ruin. Facing a wall of closed doors, she accepts an offer that seems to promise a way out — a job that requires her to carry contraband narcotics across a border by concealing them inside her body. What looks like a single desperate act quickly spirals outward, exposing Neda to risks far greater than any payday could justify. The film charts her internal reckoning as the gravity of her decision becomes impossible to ignore, and the cost of survival begins to exceed anything she imagined.
Cast & crew
Director Mehdi Rahmani shapes a film built on raw, contained performances. Neda Jebraeili anchors the story in the lead role, bringing restraint and physical presence to a character defined by quiet desperation. Mansour Shahbazi and Mohammad Ali Najafian provide the human architecture around her — each representing a different face of the world Neda must navigate.
Context & significance
Iranian social realism has a long tradition of centering women whose choices are constrained from every direction — economic, social, familial. Karte Parvaz belongs to that strand of Iranian cinema that refuses to moralize even as it presents a morally charged situation. For diaspora viewers, the film resonates on multiple levels: the pressure of financial precarity that many families know firsthand, and the way that pressure warps otherwise ordinary decisions. It is a film about what poverty does to agency, told without sentimentality.
Where & how to watch
Karte Parvaz is available to stream on K-Time. The film is in Persian with original audio — no Persian dub or subtitles are included. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone with no VPN required and no geo-blocking. Cancel anytime.