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Abbas KiarostamiEdit

Abbas Kiarostami was one of the defining figures in modern cinema, a master who bridged the documentary impulse with lyrical storytelling and left an enduring mark on world film. Born in Tehran and active from the 1960s onward, he built a career largely outside conventional studio systems, working within Iran’s film landscape to produce work that is at once intensely particular to its setting and universally legible through its moral questions. He also pursued painting and photography, but it is through his movies that his influence spread far beyond his homeland. He began his film career in the milieu of the Kanoon, the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, where he contributed to film education and produced early works that would foreshadow his later style. Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults.

Across a career that spanned several decades, Kiarostami developed a distinctive approach to storytelling: long, quiet takes; the everyday lives of ordinary people; a preference for non-professional actors; and endings that resist tidy conclusions. This combination produced a body of work that earned international admiration while remaining firmly rooted in Iran’s social and cultural texture. His films—from the Koker trilogy to later experiments with form—are frequently cited as touchstones of world cinema, and they helped redefine what Iranian cinema could accomplish on the global stage. Notable works include the Koker trilogy entries Where is the Friend's House? Where is the Friend's House?, And Life Goes On And Life Goes On, and Through the Olive Trees Through the Olive Trees; the intimate, austere Taste of Cherry which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival in 1997; The Wind Will Carry Us The Wind Will Carry Us; Ten Ten (film); Shirin Shirin; Like Someone in Love Like Someone in Love; and Certified Copy Certified Copy.

Life and career

Early life and formation

Kiarostami was born in 1940 in Tehran and trained as a painter, a background that informed his exact framing and compositional sensibility. He became involved with the Kanoon in the 1960s, a state-supported institution that fostered film education and production, especially for children and youth. Working as a photographer and filmmaker in this environment helped him cultivate a disciplined realism and an eye for the way ordinary people speak, move, and choose under constraint. This foundation would inform his later insistence on the moral weight of everyday decisions and the human capacity to find meaning within limits. Iran.

The Koker trilogy and a distinctive realism

Kiarostami’s early feature work and his Koker trilogy—the Neighborhood of the town of Koker—established a template that would define much of his career. Where is the Friend's House? (1987) uses a simple premise about a boy seeking to protect a friend, while its sequels And Life Goes On (1992) and Through the Olive Trees (1994) blend fiction with documentary-like observation, often focusing on conversations, chance encounters, and the relationships between people and place. This trilogy is renowned for its patient pace, naturalistic performances, and its sense that truth emerges through small, unforced moments rather than through overt drama. Where is the Friend's House? And Life Goes On Through the Olive Trees.

Taste of Cherry (1997) represents a pivot toward a more formal, almost meditative structure. The film follows a man driving through a desert landscape contemplating life and death, with minimal dialogue and a stark, defined space that invites audiences to fill in meaning. Its ascent to the Cannes Palme d'Or brought Kiarostami’s approach to international attention and underscored his reputation for turning personal inquiry into a cinematic event that speaks beyond language and borders. Taste of Cherry.

Later work and experimentation

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw Kiarostami push his formal experiment further. The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) places a traveler in a small village where time seems to move at its own rhythm, a meditation on observation, memory, and cultural distance. Ten (2002) narrows the lens to the interior of a car, where a sustained, dialogue-driven conversation among a driver, a mother, and her daughter unfolds in a pressure-cooker setting that tests ethics, truth, and perception. Shirin (2008) is a cinematic composition built around spectators watching a cinema audience, a bold exploration of female gaze and collective experience. Like Someone in Love (2012) expands his global reach, and Certified Copy (2010) engages questions of authenticity and performance in a knowingly hybrid European setting. These works demonstrate how Kiarostami retained his core preoccupations—truth, choice, and the interplay between surface and meaning—while expanding his formal toolkit. The Wind Will Carry Us Ten (film) Shirin Like Someone in Love Certified Copy.

Artistic philosophy and technique

Kiarostami’s cinema is often described as a synthesis of realism and poetry. Several elements recur across his filmography:

  • Long, unbroken takes that allow scenes to unfold in their own time, letting viewers infer motive and consequence rather than having every beat telegraphed.
  • A preference for non-professional actors who bring a natural spontaneity to dialogue and behavior, creating a sense of immediacy and authenticity.
  • Minimalist narrative structures with open endings that invite interpretation and discussion, rather than delivering final moral judgments.
  • A visual language that tends toward spare compositions, natural light, and a painter’s eye for color and texture in landscapes and urban spaces.
  • An interest in the social fabric of ordinary life—families, neighbors, travelers—that reveals broader truths about freedom, responsibility, and community without resorting to overt political speech. Non-professional actors Long take.

These choices have led some critics to view his work as apolitical or deliberately indirect; others see them as a principled stance that respects audiences and a complex social reality. In a political climate where art can become a battleground for ideology, Kiarostami’s method offered a form of cultural Libertas—art that speaks through human experience and moral inquiry rather than factional rhetoric. This approach also helped his films travel widely, translating local concerns into universal questions about life, memory, and choice. World cinema.

Themes, controversies, and reception

Kiarostami’s films elicit a range of interpretations, and the debates around them often reflect broader tensions in contemporary film culture.

  • Human agency under constraint: Across his work, human beings exercise judgment in imperfect circumstances. The result is a cinema of responsibility, where each character must navigate truth, loyalty, and consequence. This emphasis on conscience resonates with audiences who value personal accountability and dignity in the face of difficulty. Moral philosophy.

  • Politics and censorship: In a country with a tightly managed film industry, Kiarostami worked within limits while still probing social realities. Some critics argue that his indirect approach avoids necessary confrontation with political oppression; supporters counter that a disciplined, allegorical method can reach wider audiences and survive censorship while preserving artistic integrity. Those who dismiss his work as merely apolitical often overlook how his films quietly critique social norms, authority, and the fragility of life. From a perspective that prizes practical liberty and artistic independence, his restraint is seen as a strategic, not cowardly, choice.

  • The gaze and representation: Films like Shirin foreground spectatorship and the female gaze, inviting debate about representation, agency, and voice within a conservative society. Proponents view this as a bold experimental inquiry into perception and culture; critics may argue it risks essentializing or reducing women to a shared gaze. The discourse surrounding these questions illustrates how art can provoke meaningful conversations about gender, culture, and power without resorting to polemics. Shirin.

  • Global influence and cross-cultural dialogue: Kiarostami’s work helped redefine world cinema by proving that a film rooted in a specific locale can speak in universal terms. His approach influenced a generation of filmmakers who sought to tell human stories with formal restraint and intellectual curiosity. The reception of his films at major festivals and in art-house circuits worldwide reflects a broader trend toward cinéma of ideas that travels across languages and borders. Cannes Film Festival Iranian cinema.

Legacy and influence

Kiarostami’s influence extends well beyond his native Iran and the confines of any single movement. He is frequently cited in discussions of contemporary world cinema as a touchstone for how film can operate on multiple planes—sensory, ethical, and epistemic—at once. Directors in various countries have cited his patient, observational approach as a model for balancing realism with imaginative structure, while audiences continue to return to his work for its humane curiosity, ambiguity, and quiet moral intensity. His films remain standard references in surveys of late-20th- and early-21st-century cinema and are studied for how they negotiate locality, form, and universal questions about what it means to live a life with others. World cinema.

Selected filmography

See also