Director: Tristan Séguéla

Cast: Jamel Debbouze, Hakim Jemili, Monia Chokri, Milo Machado-Graner, Youssef Tounzi

Mercato is a 2025 French drama-thriller directed by Tristan Séguéla, pulling back the curtain on professional football's high-stakes transfer market. Starring Jamel Debbouze and Hakim Jemili, the film immerses audiences in a world where careers, fortunes, and loyalties can shift in seven frantic days.

What is Mercato about?

Driss is a football agent working the edges of a multi-billion-dollar industry where every handshake hides a hidden agenda. With the transfer window closing fast, he suddenly finds himself in serious danger — not from rivals across a negotiating table, but from forces that want to bury him before the deadline arrives. Racing against time, he must broker a deal that might be his only way out while the world of elite sport continues its gleaming, indifferent spin around him. The film uses the pressure-cooker logic of the mercato — that frenzied annual period when clubs and agents scramble to move players — as a backdrop for a tightly wound personal thriller about survival, greed, and the thin line between opportunity and catastrophe.

Cast & crew

Director Tristan Séguéla brings a kinetic, street-level energy to the material, drawing on an ensemble that blends French comedy royalty with dramatic newcomers. Jamel Debbouze, one of France's most beloved performers, anchors the film alongside Hakim Jemili. The supporting cast includes Monia Chokri, Milo Machado-Graner, Youssef Tounzi, Vincent Rottiers, Stéphane Bak, and Birane Ba.

Context & significance

Football has always been a universal language for the Iranian diaspora, and Mercato speaks it fluently. The sport is deeply woven into everyday life for Iranians at home and abroad, and a thriller set inside the transfer industry — with its mix of ambition, betrayal, and money — translates instantly across cultural lines. The film's North African and French-Arab leads also give it a resonance beyond purely French audiences, connecting with the broader experience of navigating majority-culture institutions while holding onto your own identity. It is available on K-Time with a full Persian dub, meaning you can watch this French production entirely in your own language without missing a word of the fast-talking deal-making at its core.

Where & how to watch

Mercato is available on K-Time with a Persian dub so you can follow every twist in your own language. Stream it on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, no extra download required. Subscribe and cancel anytime.