You’re not allowed to know the Iranian Woman. Not truly, anyway—not personally, and don’t even think about intimately. Not in public. In public, you must treat…
There’s at least a few reasons for the near total lack of critical interest in Abbas Kiarostami’s 10 on Ten, not the least of…
Even in his earlier, more relatively conventional films, Abbas Kiarostami always maintained an eye for radical formal experimentation. Close Up, for instance, is as…
In an interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum and Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, Abbas Kiarostami recited a verse from the poet Rumi: “You are my polo ball, running…
In 2001, at the request of the United Nations, Abbas Kiarostami traveled to Africa to scout locations and shoot raw footage for a film…
In retrospect, Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us represents the calm before a contentious political decade between Iran and the U.S., one that dragged…
Part of the appeal of a film like Taste of Cherry—Kiarostami’s minimalist masterpiece, all white-canvas stretches of silence and inaction—lies in its openness to…
Abbas Kiarostami has mostly stayed away from love stories—he tends to find it impossible in his films to recreate situations that even remotely hint…
When Abbas Kiarostami made Where Is the Friend’s Home?, he had no intention of making a trilogy. But his next two films, Life, and…
The Iranian cinema is abundant with films about children (The White Balloon and Children of Heaven being the two classic popular examples). Where Is the…
Whether a film does or does not present the truth seems considerably less important to us than whether or not it intends to do so.…
Abbas Kiarostami has never been shy of image manipulation in his documentary films. One almost hesitates to call Close Up a documentary, for instance, because…
Ostensibly beyond Abbas Kiarostami’s typical terrain—particularly because of its complete lack of optimism—The Report feels like a puzzle piece from another game, if only at…
Despite its perfectly befitting narrative set-up, and however enjoyable it is to watch, Abbas Kiarostami’s A Suit for Wedding doesn’t entirely live up to its…
Future Iranian arthouse figurehead Abbas Kiarostami arrived in 1974 not only with his first feature-length film, but also a set of stylistic and thematic…
The Experience is far removed from what most consider Abbas Kiarostami’s feature debut, The Traveller, despite preceding it by only one year. It shows the…