Director: Saeed Zamaniyan

Cast: Elnaz Shakerdoost, Sepideh Dastineh, Taranom Ahangar, Mansour Nasiri, Sahel Namvar

Mesle Yek Raz is a 2023 Iranian short drama film directed by Saeed Zamaniyan, running approximately twenty minutes. It follows a nine-year-old girl navigating the aftermath of trauma through the blurred space between memory and imagination, bringing an intimate, hushed quality rarely seen in short-form Iranian cinema.

What is Mesle Yek Raz about?

Baran is nine years old, and something has happened to her that no child should have to carry alone. In the weeks that follow, her waking hours blur into something indistinct — she drifts between moments that feel real and moments that feel like echoes. Her world is built from fragments: a memory that surfaces without warning, a fear that reshapes an ordinary room, a thread of hope she holds quietly. The film does not spell out what occurred; instead, it builds its meaning from what Baran sees, imagines, and gradually begins to confront. Zamaniyan keeps the camera close, giving the audience access to a child's interior life without intrusion or explanation.

Cast & crew

Director Saeed Zamaniyan shapes the film around a precisely controlled emotional register, allowing silence to do much of the storytelling work. Lead actress Elnaz Shakerdoost brings fragility and presence to the role of the child's emotional world, supported by Sepideh Dastineh, Taranom Ahangar, Mansour Nasiri, and Sahel Namvar in roles that hold the story's quiet perimeter.

Context & significance

Short films from Iran have long operated as a proving ground for the country's most sensitive social observations — topics that would struggle to survive in longer commercial formats find room in the compressed space of twenty minutes. Mesle Yek Raz belongs to this tradition: a work that addresses childhood trauma not through dramatic confrontation but through mood, gesture, and the logic of a child's inner life. For diaspora viewers, the film speaks to a recognizable emotional grammar — the weight of things unspoken in Iranian family culture, the way children absorb difficulty before adults acknowledge it. It is understated filmmaking that rewards patient attention.

Where & how to watch

Mesle Yek Raz is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. Watch it on the web, on your TV, or on your phone with no VPN needed and no geo-blocking. Subtitles are available. Subscribe and cancel anytime.