Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami

1940-06-22 – 2016-07-04 (age 76) Tehran, Iran
View on IMDb ↗

Biography

Abbas Kiarostami (Persian: عباس کیارستمی [ʔæbˌbɒːs kijɒːɾostæˈmi] ; June 22, 1940 – July 4, 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Abbas Kiarostami, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Photos

Known For

Through the Olive Trees
Close-Up
Close-Up

1990

as Self

Homework
Homework

1989

as Self (uncredited)

Kurosawa's Way
Kurosawa's Way

2011

as Self

Abbas Kiarostami: A Report
What Is Cinema?
What Is Cinema?

2013

as Self

Making of 'Like Someone in Love'
Guest
Guest

2011

as Self

Chaplin Today: The Kid
Close-Up Long Shot
Close-Up Long Shot

1996

as Self (archive footage)

Bukhara Chronicles
Bukhara Chronicles

2025

as voice

Kiarostami in Close up
Kiarostami in Close up

2000

as as Self

Print
Print

2019

as Self

ABC Africa
ABC Africa

2001

as Self

A Walk with Kiarostami