Director: Oktay Baraheni

Cast: Saed Soheili, Houman Seyyedi, Anahita Afshar

Pole Khab is a 2018 Iranian drama-crime film directed by Oktay Baraheni, exploring moral complexity and the blurred lines between guilt and innocence in a society where ordinary people carry hidden burdens. The film runs 90 minutes and carries an unsparing, grounded tone.

What is Pole Khab about?

The story centers on a web of relationships that unravel under the weight of secrets. Ordinary men and women, none of them straightforwardly villainous, find themselves drawn into circumstances that test how far they will go to protect what matters to them. The film resists easy moral judgment, presenting its characters as neither heroes nor monsters but as people trapped by choices that compound over time. As tensions mount and loyalties are strained, the narrative asks uncomfortable questions about complicity, self-deception, and what we tell ourselves when we cross a line we once thought uncrossable.

Cast & crew

Director Oktay Baraheni also served as the screenplay's author, bringing a writer-director's control to the material. Lead actor Saed Soheili anchors the drama with a restrained performance, while Houman Seyyedi, known for his range across Iranian cinema, brings credibility to a morally ambiguous role. Anahita Afshar rounds out the principal cast, grounding the human dynamics at the film's center.

Context & significance

Iranian crime-drama has a long tradition of using genre conventions to examine social fault lines — corruption, economic pressure, and the quiet desperation of urban life. Pole Khab sits within that lineage, offering diaspora viewers a window into a contemporary Tehran that rarely makes it into headline coverage. For Iranians living abroad, films like this hold a particular resonance: they depict the texture of everyday life — not propaganda, not nostalgia — but the friction of real choices. Produced in 2014 and released in 2018, the film reflects a period when Iranian independent cinema was finding bold new ways to tell stories grounded in moral ambiguity.

Where & how to watch

Pole Khab is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. Watch on the web, your TV, or your phone — no VPN needed, no extra download, no geo-blocking. Cancel anytime.