Abbas Kiarostami

Lore & Background

Kiarostami was born in Tehran to a Persian family. His first artistic experience was painting, and he won a painting competition at age 18 before studying at the University of Tehran School of Fine Arts, majoring in painting and graphic design. He supported his studies by working as a traffic policeman. In the 1960s, he worked in advertising, designing posters and creating commercials, and shot around 150 advertisements for Iranian television between 1967 and 1970. He began creating credit titles for films and illustrating children's books in the late 1960s.

In 1970, Kiarostami helped set up a filmmaking department at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in Tehran. His first film was the twelve-minute short The Bread and Alley (1970). He pursued an individualistic style, and his early works included The Traveler (1974) and Report (1977). He gained international recognition with Where Is the Friend's House? (1987), the first of the Koker trilogy, which also includes And Life Goes On (1992) and Through the Olive Trees (1994). These films relate to the 1990 Manjil–Rudbar earthquake and explore themes of life, death, change, and continuity.

In the 1990s, Kiarostami directed Close-Up (1990), a part-documentary, part-staged film about a real-life trial of an impersonator. Taste of Cherry (1997) was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. Later works Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012) were his first films shot outside Iran, in Italy and Japan respectively.

Reader's Guide

Abbas Kiarostami's significance lies in his role as a leading figure of the Iranian New Wave, a movement that began in the late 1960s and emphasized poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with political and philosophical issues. His films are noted for using child protagonists, documentary-style narratives set in rural villages, and conversations unfolding inside cars with stationary mounted cameras. He incorporated Persian poetry into dialogue, titles, and themes, and his work contains notable ambiguity, a mixture of simplicity and complexity, and a blend of fictional and documentary elements. Themes of change, continuity, life, and death recur throughout his films.

Kiarostami's critical acclaim is reflected in the recognition of his films: Where Is the Friend's House?, Close-Up, and The Wind Will Carry Us were ranked among the 100 best foreign films in a 2018 BBC Culture critics' poll. Close-Up was also ranked one of the 50 greatest movies of all time in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll. His influence extends beyond Iran, with directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, and Nanni Moretti praising his work. He worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, art director, producer, and also as a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, and graphic designer.

Did You Know?

• Kiarostami won a painting competition at age 18 before studying at the University of Tehran School of Fine Arts.
• He shot around 150 advertisements for Iranian television between 1967 and 1970.
• Taste of Cherry (1997) was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.
• Certified Copy (2010) was Kiarostami's first film shot entirely outside Iran, in Italy; Like Someone in Love (2012) was his second, shot in Japan.