Director: Masoud Abparvar
Cast: Amin Tarokh, Parivash Nazarieh, Shahrokh Foroutanian, Afsane Chehreazad, Mehdi Solouki
Saate 25 is a 2006 Iranian drama film directed by Masoud Abparvar, following a war veteran's disorienting return to a homeland and family that have moved on without him. The film runs 90 minutes and explores the psychological distance between a man shaped by years of captivity and the world that kept turning in his absence.
What is Saate 25 about?
Taha comes back home after enduring years at the front and then in enemy captivity. The reunion he imagined is nothing like the reality waiting for him. His family members seem like strangers who have rebuilt their lives around an absence, and the rhythms of everyday civilian life feel foreign to a man whose sense of time stopped somewhere on a battlefield. As Taha tries to find his footing, fragments of the life he left behind begin to surface, and with them the suggestion that a deeper truth lies beneath the silence and the changed faces around him. The story holds its tension in quiet scenes of estrangement rather than confrontation.
Cast & crew
Amin Tarokh carries the film as Taha, bringing a subdued physical presence suited to a character who speaks more through stillness than words. Parivash Nazarieh and Shahrokh Foroutanian appear as family members whose relationship to Taha has shifted during his long absence. Afsane Chehreazad, Mehdi Solouki, Seyed Ali Tabatabaei, and Qasem Zare round out the ensemble in supporting roles.
Context & significance
Films about the Iran-Iraq War and its aftermath form one of the most distinctive currents in Iranian cinema. Saate 25 belongs to a quieter strand of that tradition — not the battlefield epic but the home-front reckoning, asking what happens to the men who survived and the families who learned to live without them. For diaspora audiences who grew up hearing about the sacrifices of that generation, or who have relatives who lived through that period, the film offers an intimate window into the emotional cost of a conflict whose official narratives rarely captured private grief. The story's title — Twenty-Fifth Hour — implies a time that does not officially exist, which mirrors Taha's own liminal state.
Where & how to watch
Saate 25 is available to stream on K-Time with original Persian audio. No VPN is needed — the title is accessible from any country, on the web, on your TV, or on your phone. Start watching with a K-Time subscription and cancel anytime.