Director: Ali Mosaffa

Cast: Zuzana Stivínová, Magdaléna Borová, Petra Nesvačilová, Antonie Formanová, Klára Melíšková

Nabodan is a 2021 Iranian-Czech co-production drama-thriller directed by Ali Mosaffa, set between Tehran and Prague. An Iranian man travels to the Czech capital to piece together fragments of his father's communist past, only to find himself entangled in a mystery that shatters everything he believed about his family.

What is Nabodan about?

Rouzbeh leaves behind a strained life in Tehran and flies to Prague, determined to learn more about his father, a communist exile who spent years in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War era. He tracks down the apartment where his father once lived and knocks on the door — but instead of quiet archival research, a police officer intercepts him. The current occupant, a man named Vladimir, has plummeted from a window. As Rouzbeh begins unraveling Vladimir's hidden world, an unexpected blood connection surfaces, pulling him deeper into secrets his father took great pains to bury. What began as a historical inquiry transforms into something far more personal and unsettling.

Cast & crew

Director Ali Mosaffa, himself an Iranian actor and filmmaker based between Iran and Europe, brings an insider-outsider sensitivity to this cross-cultural story. The film draws on a predominantly Czech ensemble: Zuzana Stivínová, Magdaléna Borová, Petra Nesvačilová, Antonie Formanová, and Klára Melíšková anchor the Prague-set sequences with understated precision.

Context & significance

Nabodan occupies a rare space in Iranian cinema: a co-production that places a Persian protagonist at the center of Central European history. For diaspora viewers, the film's architecture is immediately legible — an Iranian who left everything, searching for a parent whose true identity was concealed. The communist-exile theme echoes real biographies from the generation that scattered after 1979, making the father's hidden life feel less like fiction and more like a shared cultural wound. The Prague setting adds another layer: a city that itself survived decades of political suffocation, mirroring Tehran's own complicated modern history. The mystery-thriller structure keeps the pacing taut while the drama underneath asks harder questions about loyalty, shame, and what parents choose to protect their children from.

Where & how to watch

Nabodan is available on K-Time with the original audio track and subtitles. No VPN is needed and there is no extra download required — stream directly on the web, on your TV, or on your phone. Subscription plans include a cancel-anytime option.