Director: Hamidreza Ghorbani

Cast: Parinaz Izadyar, Babak Hamidian, Javad Ezati, Navid Pourfaraj, Behrouz Shoeibi

Maghze Ostokhan (Bone Marrow) is a 2023 Iranian drama film directed by Hamidreza Ghorbani, starring Parinaz Izadyar and Babak Hamidian. It follows a mother's desperate race against time to save her son's life when the only medical hope lies with a man condemned to death.

What is Maghze Ostokhan about?

Bahar is a woman carrying a burden most parents cannot imagine: her young son Payam is gravely ill with cancer, and every conventional treatment has failed. The only remaining option is a specific stem-cell procedure requiring umbilical cord blood — a resource tied to a man who is now on death row, scheduled to be executed within the month. That man is Payam's biological father, separated from Bahar long before the illness struck, now living apart and facing the end of his life for a violent crime. With days shrinking and bureaucratic walls rising at every turn, Bahar must find a path through an indifferent legal system, fractured family loyalties, and her own grief to reach the one person who might save her child — before the state makes that impossible forever.

Cast & crew

Director Hamidreza Ghorbani brings a restrained, observational eye to this emotionally charged material. Parinaz Izadyar, one of Iranian cinema's most versatile leading actresses, anchors the film as Bahar, carrying the story's weight with quiet intensity. Babak Hamidian and Javad Ezati provide strong support, while Navid Pourfaraj, Behrouz Shoeibi, and Alireza Mirsalari fill out an ensemble that keeps the human stakes grounded and credible.

Context & significance

Iranian social dramas of the 2020s have repeatedly returned to the collision between ordinary families and an unyielding system — courts, hospitals, bureaucracies — that seems designed to exhaust rather than help. Maghze Ostokhan sits squarely in this tradition, drawing on the visceral fear shared by parents everywhere while rooting it in specifically Iranian legal and social realities: the speed of capital punishment, the fragmentation of families after divorce, and the quiet heroism required just to be heard by an institution. For diaspora viewers, the film offers a window into the pressures that shaped the lives many left behind, and an unflinching look at love's persistence in the face of overwhelming odds.

Where & how to watch

Maghze Ostokhan is available now on K-Time with Persian audio — no dubbed version needed, as the film is originally in Farsi. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone with no VPN required and no geo-blocking. Subscribe once and cancel anytime.