Croatia, mid-1990s: while the Balkan war grinds on, an Iranian film researcher arrives with a camera, a photograph, and a promise to keep. Khakestare Sabz (1994) is Ebrahim Hatamikia's account of that search — a wartime drama that carries Iranian cinema's long engagement with conflict far beyond Iran's own borders.
What is Khakestare Sabz about?
Hadi travels from Iran to Croatia to pursue research on filmmaking. Before he leaves, his friend Aziz hands him a photograph and a VHS tape with a single request: find a young woman named Fatemeh and look after her. What begins as an errand folded into an academic trip becomes the journey itself. Guided by a local woman named Hani, Hadi moves through cities and countryside marked by the fighting, following a trail that is never quite cold and never quite warm. The tape and the photograph become his compass, and the search steadily entangles him in lives the war has scattered, testing how far a promise made in peacetime can be carried through the middle of someone else's war.
About the cast
Atila Pesiani, a mainstay of the Iranian stage and screen from a celebrated theatrical family, plays Hadi and anchors nearly every scene. The supporting cast is unusual for an Iranian production of its era: Czech actress Zlata Plskova and Slovak-born Barbora Bobulova — later a familiar face in Italian cinema — appear alongside him, a direct result of the film's European shoot.
Context & significance
Ebrahim Hatamikia built his reputation on films examining the Iran-Iraq war and its aftermath, and Khakestare Sabz marks a striking turn: he carries his recurring themes — duty, absence, the weight of a promise — into the Balkans while the conflict there was still unfolding. Mounting an Iranian feature in wartime Croatia was a logistical rarity in 1994, and the film sits in his filmography as a bridge between his early front-line stories and the more introspective dramas that followed. The title translates as 'green ash.'
Watching Khakestare Sabz on K-Time
Khakestare Sabz streams on K-Time once you log in with a free account; reading this editorial page requires none. K-Time serves Persian speakers around the world with a Farsi-first interface, keeping Hatamikia's 1990s work available alongside contemporary titles on TV, mobile, and web.