Director: Mohammad Kharatzadeh
Cast: Alirum Nouraei, Alireza Kamali, Mohsen Afshani, Tina Akhoondtabar, Enayat Bakhshi
Rafi is a 2025 Iranian drama-crime film directed by Mohammad Kharatzadeh, running 68 minutes. It follows a man named Rafi whose release from prison opens the door to a quieter life — yet old bonds of loyalty and unresolved emotion keep pulling him back toward the world he tried to leave behind.
What is Rafi about?
When Rafi walks out of prison, he carries a simple ambition: to rebuild his days without the weight of his past. He imagines ordinary routines, steady ground beneath his feet. But the ties forged inside — or long before the bars closed around him — prove impossible to sever cleanly. Friends from his former life resurface, and with them come obligations he never formally agreed to carry. Rafi finds himself caught between the version of himself he wants to become and the version that loyalty demands he remain. The film holds its tension in small scenes, in glances and silences, tracing how deeply friendship and feeling shape a man's choices even when those choices cost him everything he is trying to protect.
Cast & crew
The film is directed by Mohammad Kharatzadeh and features Alirum Nouraei in the title role, supported by Alireza Kamali, Mohsen Afshani, Tina Akhoondtabar, and Enayat Bakhshi. Together the ensemble keeps the film grounded, with performances that let quiet moments carry the story's emotional weight without overstatement.
Context & significance
Iranian drama-crime films have long explored the friction between the individual and society — the ex-convict seeking reintegration is a subject the Iranian cinema tradition handles with particular sensitivity, balancing social critique with deeply human storytelling. Rafi fits inside that lineage, focusing not on spectacle but on the interior cost of loyalty and desire. For diaspora viewers who grew up watching Iranian social dramas, this kind of intimate, low-key film offers a sense of recognition — the neighborhoods, the moral codes, the way friendship functions as both shelter and trap. At 68 minutes the film is compact, demanding nothing excessive from the viewer while leaving room for reflection long after the credits end.
Where & how to watch
Rafi is available to stream now on K-Time in its original Persian audio. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no geo-blocking, no VPN needed. Start or cancel anytime.