Director: Bijan Mirbagheri
Cast: Niki Karimi, Rouzbeh Bemani, Soroush Sehat, Maral Farjad, Pegah Khosravi
Roboodeh Shodeh is a 2016 Iranian drama directed by Bijan Mirbagheri, exploring the pressures and vulnerabilities that women navigate within marriage and family as a couple stands on the threshold of a life-altering decision to emigrate from Iran.
What is Roboodeh Shodeh about?
A husband and wife have mapped out their future: they will leave Iran and begin again somewhere new. But as their departure date approaches, a series of complications unravels the plans they believed were settled. Tensions that had been suppressed beneath the surface of their relationship emerge with unexpected force, and both partners find themselves questioning not just the logistics of migration but the foundations of the life they have built together. The film traces how external pressures — legal, social, and personal — bear down on a woman whose voice and agency are repeatedly tested. What began as a shared ambition becomes a reckoning with identity, commitment, and control.
Cast & crew
Niki Karimi, one of Iranian cinema's most respected actresses and filmmakers, leads the cast and brings her characteristic emotional precision to a role that requires sustained interior tension. Rouzbeh Bemani plays her husband, while Soroush Sehat, Maral Farjad, and Pegah Khosravi round out the ensemble in supporting roles that shape the couple's social world.
Context & significance
Iranian social drama has long used the intimate space of marriage and the household as a lens for examining systemic inequalities, and Roboodeh Shodeh sits squarely within that tradition. The theme of emigration carries particular resonance for diaspora audiences: the moment of leaving — full of hope, fear, and exposure — is one many Iranian families know from personal experience. The film's attention to the specific obstacles women face in that transition speaks to a generation of viewers who have lived through similar crossroads. Mirbagheri brings a realist sensibility to the material, keeping the drama grounded in recognizable social textures rather than melodrama.
Where & how to watch
Roboodeh Shodeh is available on K-Time in its original Persian audio. Watch on the web, your TV, or your phone with no VPN required and no geo-blocking — stream from anywhere in the world. Cancel anytime.