Director: Houman Seyyedi

Cast: Yasna Mirtahmasb, Azadeh Samadi, Amir Jafari

Sizdah ("Thirteen") is a 2014 Iranian drama film directed by Houman Seyyedi, following a withdrawn thirteen-year-old boy named Bemani as he struggles between a broken home, school harassment, and a street gang that seems to offer the belonging he desperately needs.

What is Sizdah about?

Bemani is a quiet, withdrawn boy of thirteen whose life has fractured along every seam. His parents live apart, leaving him to absorb the fallout alone, and at school his silence marks him as an easy target for bullies. Isolated on all sides, he drifts toward a gang operating in his neighbourhood — a group led, unusually, by a sharp and charismatic girl. What looks from the outside like danger feels, to Bemani, like the first community he has ever truly belonged to. The film watches him navigate loyalty, peer pressure, and the blurry line between shelter and harm, without offering easy answers.

Cast & crew

Director Houman Seyyedi is one of Iranian cinema's most consistent voices in contemporary social drama, known for grounding difficult subjects in street-level realism. Yasna Mirtahmasb carries the film's emotional weight as the gang leader, while Azadeh Samadi and Amir Jafari bring lived-in credibility to the adult figures who shape — and largely fail — Bemani.

Context & significance

Sizdah sits within a tradition of Iranian social-realist cinema that treats childhood not as innocence but as a site of political and economic pressure. Films in this lineage — from early Kiarostami to later urban dramas — use young protagonists to expose the fault lines of Iranian society: broken families, economic strain, institutional neglect. For diaspora viewers, Bemani's predicament carries an extra resonance: the experience of belonging nowhere, of improvising kinship outside of family, is something many Iranians who left home in adolescence know intimately. Seyyedi's restrained direction keeps the story grounded in recognisable Tehran streets and emotional truth.

Where & how to watch

Sizdah is available to stream on K-Time in original Persian audio. Watch on the web, your TV, or your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, cancel anytime.