Director: Abolhassan Davoodi
Cast: Masoud Rayegany, Roya Teymourian, عزت الله انتظامی, Pegah Ahangarani, Bahram Radan
Zadboom is a 2009 Iranian drama film directed by Abolhassan Davoodi, exploring themes of homeland, belonging, and return through the intertwined stories of Iranians who emigrated after the Islamic Revolution and now contemplate coming back to their country of origin.
What is Zadboom about?
Decades after the Islamic Revolution, a group of Iranians scattered across the world face the question of whether to return to the land they left behind. Their personal journeys — shaped by memory, loss, and longing — are set against a quiet scientific parallel: a German researcher tracks whether sea turtles that once departed Iranian shores find their way home after thirty years. The film weaves these two threads together without resolving either one easily, letting the tension between the pull of origin and the weight of absence drive its emotional momentum. Characters reckon with what home means when so much time has passed, and whether return is an act of reclaiming identity or confronting irreversible change.
Cast & crew
The film features a distinguished ensemble including Masoud Rayegany and Roya Teymourian in central roles, alongside the veteran stage and screen actor Ezzatollah Entezami, whose presence lends the production considerable dramatic gravity. Pegah Ahangarani and Bahram Radan round out a cast that spans generations of Iranian cinema.
Context & significance
Zadboom speaks directly to the experience of the Iranian diaspora — a community that has spent decades negotiating questions of identity, return, and belonging from a distance. The film's dual structure, pairing human displacement with a natural-world metaphor of migration, gives it a lyrical quality unusual in mainstream Iranian drama. For Persian-speaking viewers abroad, the film's central emotional question — whether home can still be home after a lifetime away — resonates with lived experience in a way that straightforwardly political or nostalgic films rarely do. Director Davoodi approaches the subject with restraint, allowing the characters' ambivalence to carry the narrative rather than resolving it through sentiment.
Where & how to watch
Zadboom is available on K-Time with original Persian audio. Watch on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, cancel anytime.