When the ground itself turns toxic, staying alive stops being a matter of survival instinct and becomes a matter of choice — that's the premise driving Rubikon, a 2022 Austrian science-fiction drama set almost entirely aboard a space station.
What is Rubikon about?
Earth has been swallowed by a poisonous fog after an unspecified catastrophe, and the handful of people left orbiting above it are the ones who have to decide what happens next. Inside the station, an algae-based life-support system keeps the crew fed and breathing indefinitely, offering a kind of permanent, isolated safety. Down below, whatever remains of humanity is fighting to survive in conditions the station's occupants can only guess at from a distance. The story follows the crew as they weigh a genuinely uncomfortable question: risk everything on a return trip to search for survivors, or stay sealed inside a system built to sustain exactly three people forever. Rather than staging that dilemma as an action set piece, the film keeps its focus tight and psychological, letting disagreement build between crew members who each read the same instruments and arrive at different conclusions about what they owe the people they left behind.
About the cast
Julia Franz Richter and Mark Ivanir anchor the crew at the center of the story, with Nicholas Monu, Jonas Emilian Gerzabek, Daniela Kong, Konstantin Frolov, Hannah Rang and Lupo Grujcic filling out the ensemble aboard the station.
Context & significance
Director Magdalena Lauritsch, working on her feature debut, builds the film around confined-space tension rather than large-scale spectacle, using the station's tight corridors and life-support systems to keep the moral question front and center. At 110 minutes, the pacing favors slow-building unease over rapid plot turns, closer to a chamber piece than a conventional disaster film.
Watching Rubikon on Ktime
Rubikon is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so viewers can watch it fully in Farsi or follow the original dialogue with subtitles. Streaming starts with a free account login, and the platform's Farsi-first design makes it easy for Persian-speaking audiences to find titles like this alongside the rest of the catalog.