Director: Alborz Poursayad
Cast: Ramin Rastad, Masoud Badrtalei, Yasin Nemati
Mordeh Khor is a 2023 Iranian short drama film directed by Alborz Poursayad, exploring the fraught dynamics of family loyalty, moral reckoning, and the weight of generational resentment as three relatives face an impossible moment on a snow-covered road.
What is Mordeh Khor about?
Three generations of one family find themselves bound together on a winter journey through an unforgiving, snow-blanketed landscape. An elderly man, barely clinging to life, sits at the center of a mounting crisis. His adult son has spent years nurturing a bitter grievance, and now, with his father weakened and vulnerable, he sees an opening to settle old scores and claim what he believes he is owed. The plan seems within reach — until the youngest member of the family, a grandson, witnesses what is unfolding and makes a choice that neither man anticipated. The film strips its story down to a single moral pivot, letting the cold setting mirror the emotional chill between the characters.
Cast & crew
The film is directed by Alborz Poursayad. The cast includes Ramin Rastad, Masoud Badrtalei, and Yasin Nemati, each anchoring one of the three generational roles at the heart of the story. Their performances carry the full weight of the film's compressed dramatic arc across its short runtime.
Context & significance
Short films have long served as a proving ground for Iranian cinema, and Mordeh Khor fits squarely within that tradition. Iranian short drama often focuses on intimate family conflicts — inheritance disputes, silenced grudges, and the obligations children feel toward aging parents — themes that resonate deeply with diaspora audiences who have navigated similar tensions across cultures and continents. The film's wintry road setting gives the story a mythic, almost fable-like quality, echoing a strand of Iranian storytelling that uses harsh landscapes to externalize internal moral struggle. For Persian-speaking viewers living abroad, this kind of compressed, quietly devastating family drama offers a direct line back to the emotional register of Iranian domestic life.
Where & how to watch
Mordeh Khor is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. You can watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, and no extra download required. Membership includes the full catalog; cancel anytime.