Director: Javad Hakami
Cast: Morteza Khanjani, Roya Miralami
Starlet is a 2025 Iranian drama short film directed by Javad Hakami, running approximately fifteen minutes. Set against the backdrop of an ordinary workday at an insurance company, the film uses a tight, confined premise to explore how professional routine and private crisis can quietly occupy the same space.
What is Starlet about?
Elham works at an insurance office where her daily duties involve evaluating claims and processing paperwork — a job defined by its structured procedures and careful attention to detail. As an ordinary shift unfolds, Elham finds herself weighing a decision that reaches far beyond any form she will ever file. Personal tensions with her husband have reached a point where resolution can no longer be deferred, and she begins to consider an unconventional way of drawing a line under those differences. The film holds its focus tightly on Elham's internal state, allowing the mundane setting of the office to amplify, rather than diminish, the weight of what she is quietly carrying. Hakami builds the drama through restraint rather than spectacle, letting small gestures and pauses do the narrative work.
Cast & crew
Director Javad Hakami keeps the cast intimate, anchoring the film entirely on two performances. Morteza Khanjani and Roya Miralami carry the full emotional weight of the story, with Miralami in the central role of Elham. Both actors work within a compressed timeframe, relying on economical, grounded performances rather than dramatic escalation to hold the audience's attention.
Context & significance
Short-form cinema has a long and respected tradition in Iranian filmmaking, and Starlet fits squarely within that lineage — films that use brief running times not as a limitation but as a discipline. For diaspora audiences, a short like this offers a precise, undiluted window into contemporary Iranian domestic life: the pressures inside a marriage, the bureaucratic textures of everyday work, and the quiet decisions that define a person's path. The film asks its viewers to read between the lines, a mode of storytelling that Iranian cinema has long cultivated with remarkable sophistication. At fifteen minutes, Starlet demands focused attention and rewards it.
Where & how to watch
Starlet is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. Stream it on the web, on your Android TV, or on your phone — no geo-blocking, no VPN required. Start a membership and cancel anytime.