Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami (22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer.

He was part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s and emphasized the use of poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with political and philosophical issues.

Kiarostami had a reputation for using child protagonists, for documentary-style narrative films, for stories that take place in rural villages, and for conversations that unfold inside cars, using stationary mounted cameras.

He is also known for his use of Persian poetry in the dialogue, titles, and themes of his films.

Kiarostami's films contain a notable degree of ambiguity, an unusual mixture of simplicity and complexity, and often a mix of fictional and documentary elements.

The concepts of change and continuity, in addition to the themes of life and death, play a major role in Kiarostami's works.

Kiarostami was born in Tehran.

His first artistic experience was painting, which he continued into his late teens, winning a painting competition at the age of 18 shortly before he left home to study at the University of Tehran School of Fine Arts.

He majored in painting and graphic design and supported his studies by working as a traffic policeman.

As a painter, designer, and illustrator, Kiarostami worked in advertising in the 1960s, designing posters and creating commercials.

In the late 1960s, he began creating credit titles for films (including Gheysar by Masoud Kimiai) and illustrating children's books.

Between 1962 and 1966, he shot around 150 advertisements for Iranian television.

An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of over forty films, including shorts and documentaries.

In 1970 when the Iranian New Wave began with Dariush Mehrjui's film Gāv, Kiarostami helped set up a filmmaking department at the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanun) in Tehran.

Its debut production, and Kiarostami's first film, was the twelve-minute The Bread and Alley (1970), a neo-realistic short film about a schoolboy's confrontation with an aggressive dog.

In the 1970s, Kiarostami pursued an individualistic style of film making.

When discussing his first film, he stated:

Bread and Alley was my first experience in cinema and I must say a very difficult one.

I had to work with a very young child, a dog, and an unprofessional crew except for the cinematographer, who was nagging and complaining all the time.

Well, the cinematographer, in a sense, was right because I did not follow the conventions of film making that he had become accustomed to.

Breaktime followed in 1972.

The department became one of Iran's most noted film studios, producing not only Kiarostami's films but acclaimed Persian films such as The Runner and Bashu, the Little Stranger.

Following The Experience (1973), Kiarostami released The Traveler (Mossafer) in 1974.

The Traveler tells the story of Qassem Julayi, a troubled and troublesome boy from a small Iranian city.

Intent on attending a football match in far-off Tehran, he scams his friends and neighbors to raise money, and journeys to the stadium in time for the game, only to meet with an ironic twist of fate.

In addressing the boy's determination to reach his goal, alongside his indifference to the effects of his amoral actions, the film examined human behavior and the balance of right and wrong.

It furthered Kiarostami's reputation for realism, diegetic simplicity, and stylistic complexity, as well as his fascination with physical and spiritual journeys.

In 1975, Kiarostami directed two short films So Can I and Two Solutions for One Problem.

In early 1976, he released Colors, followed by the fifty-four-minute film A Wedding Suit, a story about three teenagers coming into conflict over a suit for a wedding.

Kiarostami then directed Report (1977).

With a 112-minute runtime, it was considerably longer than his previous work.

The film revolved around the life of a tax collector accused of accepting bribes; suicide was among its themes.

In 1979, he produced and directed First Case, Second Case.

In the early 1980s, Kiarostami directed several short films including Toothache (1980), Orderly or Disorderly (1981), and The Chorus (1982).

Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy (1987–1994), Close-Up (1990), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), and Taste of Cherry (1997), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year.

His films Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987), Close-Up, and The Wind Will Carry Us were ranked among the 100 best foreign films in a 2018 critics' poll by BBC Culture.

In later works, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively.

Close-Up was also ranked one of the 50 greatest movies of all time in the famous decennial Sight & Sound poll conducted in 2012.

Kiarostami had worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, art director, and producer and had designed credit titles and publicity material.

He was also a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, and graphic designer.