Director: Mostafa Taghizadeh
Cast: Bahram Afshari, Sara Bahrami, Houman Barghnavard, Shabnam Ghorbani, Ladan Zhaveh Vand
Sale Gorbeh is a 2024 Iranian comedy film directed by Mostafa Taghizadeh, starring Bahram Afshari as a man whose birth year — the Year of the Cat in the Persian zodiac — turns every returning cycle of that year into a magnet for misfortune, chaos, and dark comedy for everyone around him.
What is Sale Gorbeh about?
Jahangir is a cheerful, ordinary man with one extraordinary problem: he was born in a Cat Year, and every time that twelve-year cycle rolls back around, catastrophe seems to follow the people closest to him. Friends fall into trouble, relatives narrowly dodge disaster, and acquaintances find themselves swept up in events they cannot explain. Jahangir watches helplessly as his good fortune seems to come at the direct expense of those he loves. The film plays these escalating calamities for laughs while quietly asking whether fate is real, whether a man can outrun his own calendar, and whether the people who love him will stick around long enough to find out.
Cast & crew
Bahram Afshari leads the film as the ill-starred Jahangir, bringing physical comedic timing and warm screen presence to a role that asks him to be simultaneously lucky and catastrophic. Sara Bahrami, Houman Barghnavard, Shabnam Ghorbani, Ladan Zhaveh Vand, Noushin Tabrizi, the television personality Reza Rashidpour, and Morteza Taghizadeh round out an ensemble that keeps the comedy grounded in recognizable human relationships.
Context & significance
The Persian solar calendar assigns one of twelve animals to each year in a repeating cycle, and the Cat Year — called Sal-e Gorbeh — carries its own folklore of mischief and unpredictability in Iranian popular culture. Iranian comedy films have long mined the gap between fatalism and agency, between superstition and modern life, and Sale Gorbeh fits squarely in that tradition. For diaspora viewers, these comedies serve as a direct link to the rhythms of everyday Iranian humor — the family dynamics, the deadpan reactions to the absurd, the cultural shorthand that travels across oceans and time zones and lands with the warmth of something instantly familiar.
Where & how to watch
Sale Gorbeh is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. Watch on your browser, Android TV, or phone — no geo-blocking, no VPN needed. Start your subscription and cancel anytime.