On the eve of leaving for Europe, a young woman named Tuska picks up a camera and decides to record Tehran one last time, from the north of the city all the way down to the south. Shab biron, Kaveh Sajjadi's 2014 drama, turns that farewell project into a single eventful night out.
What is Shab biron about?
Tuska is about to emigrate, and before the flight she wants something to take with her: her own footage of the city she grew up in. Her brother and a circle of friends agree to come along, and the group sets off to film Tehran end to end, moving from its affluent northern districts toward the working-class south. What begins as a light, almost touristic errand among friends gradually runs into complications the group never planned for, and the journey across the city becomes a test of the friendships themselves. Across a compact 91 minutes, the film keeps its focus on the travellers and on the changing face of Tehran sliding past their lens.
About the cast
The ensemble is anchored by Baran Kosari, one of the recognisable faces of Iranian social cinema, alongside Negar Abedi and Soheila Golestani. Because the story confines its characters to one group and largely to one night, the acting carries most of the weight — banter, friction, and the unspoken feelings that surface when someone is about to leave for good.
Context & significance
Emigration sits under the surface of a great deal of Iranian filmmaking from the 2010s, and Shab biron approaches it from an oblique, affectionate angle: not the paperwork or the goodbyes at the airport, but the urge to look hard at a home city before losing daily contact with it. The north-to-south route is meaningful in itself — Tehran's geography maps onto its social ladder, and a camera travelling down that slope takes in far more than street scenes. Sajjadi shot the film in 2014, and its Tehran-at-night texture places it among the era's small-scale urban dramas built on movement through the capital.
Watching Shab biron on K-Time
K-Time streams Shab biron in its original Persian. This page is open to everyone, while playback needs a signed-in K-Time account; after logging in you can watch on the web, on mobile, or on a television. The whole experience, menus included, is available in Farsi for Persian-speaking households abroad.