Director: Jamshid Mahmoudi
Cast: Shahab Hosseini, Hadi Hejazifar, Pantea Bahrami, Mehrdad Sedighian, Pardis Ahmadie
Pooste Shir is a 2022 Iranian drama-family series directed by Jamshid Mahmoudi, starring Shahab Hosseini in one of his most emotionally demanding television performances. Each episode runs approximately sixty minutes, weaving together the price of time lost, the fragile weight of fatherhood, and the question of whether love can survive fifteen years of forced absence.
What is Pooste Shir about?
Naeim has spent fifteen years behind bars sustained by a single hope: the chance to see his daughter again once he is free. When that day finally comes, the reunion he has been imagining through every long night in prison turns out to be far more complicated than any dream he had held onto. His daughter has grown up without him, shaped by a world he did not share, and the people around her have filled the space he left behind. Rather than a warm homecoming, Naeim faces a profound personal crisis — one that forces him to ask whether a father who was absent can still claim a place in his child's life, and at what cost that reclaiming comes to everyone involved.
The K-Time take
Mahmoudi keeps the pacing deliberate and the emotional register understated, trusting the cast rather than melodrama to carry the weight. Hosseini brings the quiet devastation of a man who prepared for freedom but not for what freedom actually demanded of him, and the ensemble — particularly Hadi Hejazifar and Pantea Bahrami — grounds the domestic scenes in lived-in specificity rather than sentiment.
Cast & crew
Shahab Hosseini, one of the most decorated actors in Iranian cinema, leads as Naeim, carrying the series' emotional architecture almost entirely on his performance. Hadi Hejazifar and Pantea Bahrami form the central supporting core, with Mehrdad Sedighian, Pardis Ahmadie, Alireza Kamali, Anahita Afshar, and Kamran Tafti rounding out an ensemble that gives the family dynamics their credible texture.
Context & significance
For the Iranian diaspora, Pooste Shir arrives at a subject that cuts close: the rupture between parent and child created by circumstances beyond anyone's control — imprisonment, exile, displacement. The series belongs to a lineage of Iranian domestic drama that examines family not as a fixed unit but as something that must be renegotiated, often painfully, across years of separation. Its IMDB rating of 8.1 reflects the resonance it found with Persian-speaking audiences who recognise the specific grief of a relationship that aged without either party present. Viewers outside Iran will find both the emotional universality and the cultural particularity equally legible.
Where & how to watch
Pooste Shir is available on K-Time with original Persian audio and Persian subtitles. You can watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, no extra download. Start a subscription and cancel anytime.