Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami; 22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer. An active film-maker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy, Close-Up, Taste of Cherry– which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year – and The Wind Will Carry Us. In his later works, Certified Copyand Like Someone in Love, he...
NationalityIranian
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth22 June 1940
Poetry always runs away from you - it's very difficult to grasp it, and every time you read it, depending on your conditions, you will have a different grasp of it. Whereas with a novel, once you have read it, you have grasped it.
I can watch films and say how technically beautiful they are, but I'm not impressed by any technicality.
There is violence in real life but I would never impose violence in a film just to attract the audience.
I don't know whether it is fortunate or unfortunate, but I have no such thing as national pride. I don't feel proud that I am Iranian. I happen to be who I am.
The world is my workshop. It is not my home.
Good cinema is what we can believe, and bad cinema is what we can't believe.
I would say that no film is apolitical. There are politics in all films. Any film that is anchored in a society, any film that deals with humanity is necessarily political.
Whenever people ask me what the story is for my next film, I won't tell and people feel it's because I'm being secretive or something, but it's actually because I'm ashamed to sum up a film in three sentences.
When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground, and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit. And if it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. This is a rule of nature. I think if I had left my country, I would be the same as the tree.
My car's my best friend. My office. My home. My location. I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me. We're in the most comfortable seats because we're not facing each other, but sitting side by side. We don't look at each other, but instead do so only when we want to. We're allowed to look around without appearing rude. We have a big screen in front of us and side views. Silence doesn't seem heavy or difficult. Nobody serves anybody. And many other aspects. One most important thing is that it transports us from one place to another.
I didn't just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death.
Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, 'Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.' That's not valid for people who want to think and reflect.
Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.
I'm not sure that my films show the reality of life in Iran; we show different aspects of life. Iran is a very extensive and expansive place, and sometimes, even for us who live there, some of the realities are very hard to comprehend.