Iranian director, poet, and screenwriter Abbas Kiarostami wa one of the country’s most prolific filmmakers, having established awards and a legacy globally. Many of his movies are considered to be some of the best movies ever released, and even after he died in 2016, his style of filmmaking is replicated by many emerging and established directors alike. Kiarostami thought he was going to pursue art, as his education was in fine arts, specifically painting and graphic design. Upon graduating from the University of Tehran, he worked in advertising, and accidentally stumbled into the film world when the Iranian New Wave began to sweep over the country in the 1970s before the revolution occurred.
His first short film, The Bread in the Alley, was released in 1970. Throughout the 1970s, he began to steadily release more films, but he hit his stride internationally when the first film in the Koker trilogy, Where Is the Friend’s Home?, came out in 1987. He began to release more films with a focus on social realism in contemporary Iranian society, a tradition that continues today in Iranian cinema. A decade after the first Koker film came out, Kiarostami won the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival for A Taste of Cherry. These are his best movies.
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6 And Life Goes On
Kanun Parvaresh Fekri
Also known as Life, and Nothing More, Life Goes On is the second part of the Koker trilogy. It was inspired by the 1990 earthquake that hit Iran, tragically killing over 30,000 people. Kiarostami returned to the region in search of the actors who appeared in Where Is the Friend’s Home?, then he fictionalized the events that happened during the earthquake to create something with a narrative. Its protagonist is a director seeking out the cast of the first movie, and when they finally reach the village, they recall stories from the event with locals. Part documentary and part fiction, And Life Goes On is a subtle reminder about the fragility of life, and how film can be used to preserve history.
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5 Certified Copy
MK2
Kiarostami was one of the few filmmakers to stay in Iran after the revolution, but his artistic eye spread beyond his native country towards the end of his life and career. Not only did he make a Japanese movie, Like Someone in Love, but he also made French movies. Certified Copy was his last movie made outside of Iran and starred Juliette Binoche and William Shimell in the leading roles. Certified Copy is not a movie easily understood on the first watch; as a woman meets a writer she is a fan of, the two act like they are strangers that happened to meet as kindred souls. However, halfway through the movie, things begin to shift unexpectedly, causing so many new questions about what one truly knows about the story.
4 The Wind Will Carry Us
MK2 Productions
The title The Wind Will Carry Us borrows its name from a Forugh Farrokzhad poem, and it is one of Kiarostami’s lesser-known movies. When it first came out, however, critics raved about the compelling nature of the movie and dubbed it to be a masterpiece. Some pose as engineers, when they are not, to gain access to a Kurdish village. They want to document the village’s funeral rites, as a 100-year-old woman is dying, but when they get there, everything is not as it seems. The Wind Will Carry Us may be a reference to a poem, but on the screen, it unfolds like a haunting poem ruminating about the meaning of life, and what it means to slow down.
3 Where Is the Friend’s Home?
Kanun Parvaresh Fekri
The first in the Koker trilogy, Where Is the Friend’s Home? helped bring Kiarostami’s name to international levels for the first time. Set in rural Iran, in a town called Koker, a young boy comes home one day and realizes that he took his classmate’s notebook in an accident. He decides he wants to return it and sets out on a quest to discover the boy’s home. Although this hero’s journey is fairly simple in its premise, Kiarostami immerses the viewer in the world he creates, making it much more than solving an urgent need. By slowing down the pace and allowing the camera time to sit with the characters and setting, this minor problem teaches audiences so much about the world and what potential there is to learn more from it.
2 Close-Up
When asked what the best Kiarostami film is, the answer tends to be Taste of Cherry or Close-Up. Close-Up was released in 1990, seven years before Taste of Cherry, but it shows the depth and maturity Kiarostami has as a filmmaker. Its genre is docufiction, which means that he based the story heavily on reality and utilized the people involved with the real-life scenario as actors — they play themselves. A huge fan of Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf decides to impersonate him and befriends a family under that false identity, leading to an unfortunate chain of events.
1 Taste of Cherry
Abbas Kiarostami Productions
Taste of Cherry is a minimalist film, choosing to mainly use long takes to tell the story, and it refuses to have a score sprinkled throughout. A man has decided that he wants to die, and so he drives through the capital city of Tehran in search of someone to bury or help him. He meets a rotating cast of characters, many from minority groups in Iran, that offer their own opinions about the matter. Taste of Cherry was highly polarizing when it initially came out, but its charm lies in a perspective often not found in Hollywood movies. It is a story about life and death, one in which the pursuit of death reminds us why one is alive in the first place.
