Sparta is a 2022 drama directed by Ulrich Seidl, an Austria-Germany-France co-production centered on a middle-aged man attempting to start over in rural Romania. Georg Friedrich takes the lead role in a story that spends most of its runtime observing rather than explaining.
What is Sparta about?
Ewald, a man in his forties who relocated to Romania years earlier, ends a relationship and moves further out, into the countryside. There he begins renovating an abandoned school building alongside a group of local boys, turning the run-down structure into a kind of makeshift stronghold where the children spend their days. For a while the arrangement gives the boys an outlet they don't otherwise have. But the villagers around them grow increasingly wary of a stranger who has inserted himself so deeply into their children's lives, and that suspicion builds through the film's second half into open conflict. Seidl, working in his characteristically observational register, lets the tension come from what is implied and left unresolved rather than from dramatic incident, and the film keeps its focus on the widening gap between Ewald's intentions and how the community around him reads them.
About the cast
Georg Friedrich carries the film as Ewald, supported by a cast that includes Florentina Elena Pop, Hans-Michael Rehberg, Marius Ignat, Octavian-Nicolae Cocis, Ecaterina Gramaticu, and Gianni Gramaticu, several of them drawn from the Romanian setting rather than imported actors. That mix of professional and local performers is part of what gives the film its documentary-adjacent texture.
Context & significance
Sparta is the second half of a two-film project Seidl shot alongside Rimini, both following the same character across different chapters of his life, and it continues the director's long-running interest in observing people at the edges of social acceptability without narrating a clear moral verdict. At 101 minutes, the film moves at a deliberate pace typical of Seidl's work, prioritizing atmosphere and accumulated unease over conventional plotting. The Austria-Germany-France co-production reflects the kind of continental funding structure common to European art-house drama of this scale.
Watching Sparta on Ktime
Sparta is available on K-Time with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, giving Farsi-speaking viewers a choice in how they watch. A free K-Time account is needed to stream the film, though this page can be read without logging in. K-Time's platform is built around a Farsi-first experience for the Iranian diaspora, from navigation to the way films like this are presented.