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Release: January 8, 2019

$7.99

Description

For what would prove to be his final film, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami gave himself a challenge: to create a dialogue between his work as a filmmaker and his work as a photographer, bridging the two art forms to which he had dedicated his life. Setting out to reconstruct the moments immediately before and after a photograph is taken, Kiarostami selected twenty-four still images-most of them stark landscapes inhabited only by foraging birds and other wildlife-and digitally animated each one into it's own subtly evolving four-and-a-half-minute vignette, creating a series of poignant studies in movement, perception, and time. A sustained meditation on the process of image making, 24 Frames is a graceful and elegiac farewell from one of the giants of world cinema.

Release: May 22, 2012

$6.99

Description

The great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami (Close-up) travels to Tuscany for a luminous and provocative romance in which nothing is as it appears. What seems at first to be a straightforward tale of two people played by Oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche (Blue) and opera singer William Shimell getting to know each other over the course of an afternoon gradually reveals itself as something richer, stranger, and trickier: a mind-bending reflection on authenticity, in art as well as in relationships. Both cerebrally and emotionally engaging, Certified Copy (Copie conforme) reminds us that love itself is an enigma.

Release: June 22, 2010

$7.99

Description

Internationally revered Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry, Ten) has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the past thirty years, and Close-Up is his most radical, brilliant work. This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event-the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf-as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves. With it's universal themes and fascinating narrative knots, Close-Up continues to resonate with viewers around the world.

Release: November 18, 2025

$6.99

Description

Long before he became one of the most renowned artists in world cinema, the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career at Tehran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (a.k.a. Kanoon), where he honed his distinctive style and themes. During his first decades as a filmmaker, Kiarostami moved freely among documentary, narrative, and even animation, and between joyous short films made for children and subtle works exploring the struggles of adolescents. Often using the classroom as a laboratory, he probed social and political tensions in Iranian society during the turbulent years before and after the 1979 revolution. Spanning his very first short, Bread and Alley (which the director called the “mother of all my films”); other underseen early revelations, like Experience and The Traveler; and nonfiction masterpieces such as Homework, the graceful, warm, and playful works collected here find moments of transcendent poetry within everyday life, and use deceptively simple premises to express universal truths about the human condition. INCLUDES The films: Bread and Alley; Breaktime; Experience; The Traveler; Two Solutions for One Problem; So Can I; Colors; A Wedding Suit; Tribute to Teachers; Solution No. 1; First Case, Second Case; Toothache; Orderly or Disorderly; The Chorus; Fellow Citizen; First Graders; and Homework PLUS: An essay by critic Ehsan Khoshbakht

Release: November 18, 2025

$6.99

Description

Long before he became one of the most renowned artists in world cinema, the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career at Tehran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (a.k.a. Kanoon), where he honed his distinctive style and themes. During his first decades as a filmmaker, Kiarostami moved freely among documentary, narrative, and even animation, and between joyous short films made for children and subtle works exploring the struggles of adolescents. Often using the classroom as a laboratory, he probed social and political tensions in Iranian society during the turbulent years before and after the 1979 revolution. Spanning his very first short, Bread and Alley (which the director called the “mother of all my films”); other underseen early revelations, like Experience and The Traveler; and nonfiction masterpieces such as Homework, the graceful, warm, and playful works collected here find moments of transcendent poetry within everyday life, and use deceptively simple premises to express universal truths about the human condition. INCLUDES The films: Bread and Alley; Breaktime; Experience; The Traveler; Two Solutions for One Problem; So Can I; Colors; A Wedding Suit; Tribute to Teachers; Solution No. 1; First Case, Second Case; Toothache; Orderly or Disorderly; The Chorus; Fellow Citizen; First Graders; and Homework PLUS: An essay by critic Ehsan Khoshbakht

Release: November 18, 2025

$6.99

Description

Long before he became one of the most renowned artists in world cinema, the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career at Tehran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (a.k.a. Kanoon), where he honed his distinctive style and themes. During his first decades as a filmmaker, Kiarostami moved freely among documentary, narrative, and even animation, and between joyous short films made for children and subtle works exploring the struggles of adolescents. Often using the classroom as a laboratory, he probed social and political tensions in Iranian society during the turbulent years before and after the 1979 revolution. Spanning his very first short, Bread and Alley (which the director called the “mother of all my films”); other underseen early revelations, like Experience and The Traveler; and nonfiction masterpieces such as Homework, the graceful, warm, and playful works collected here find moments of transcendent poetry within everyday life, and use deceptively simple premises to express universal truths about the human condition. INCLUDES The films: Bread and Alley; Breaktime; Experience; The Traveler; Two Solutions for One Problem; So Can I; Colors; A Wedding Suit; Tribute to Teachers; Solution No. 1; First Case, Second Case; Toothache; Orderly or Disorderly; The Chorus; Fellow Citizen; First Graders; and Homework PLUS: An essay by critic Ehsan Khoshbakht

Release: August 27, 2019

$6.99

Description

Abbas Kiarostami first came to international attention for this wondrous, slyly self-referential series of films set in the rural northern-Iranian town of Koker. Poised delicately between fiction and documentary, comedy and tragedy, the lyrical fables in The Koker Trilogy exemplify both the gentle humanism and playful sleight of hand that define the director’s sensibility. With each successive film, Kiarostami takes us deeper into the behind-the-scenes “reality” of the film that preceded it, heightening our understanding of the complex network of human relationships that sustain both a movie set and a village. The result is a gradual outward zoom that reveals the cosmic majesty and mystery of ordinary life. THREE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 2K digital restorations of all three films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks • New audio commentary on And Life Goes On featuring Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum, coauthors of Abbas Kiarostami • Abbas Kiarostami: Truths and Dreams, a 1994 documentary • New interview with Abbas Kiarostami’s son Ahmad Kiarostami • New conversation between Iranian-film scholar Jamsheed Akrami and film critic Godfrey Cheshire • Conversation from 2015 between Kiarostami and film-festival programmer Peter Scarlet • New English subtitle translations • More! • PLUS: An essay by critic Godfrey Cheshire Where Is the Friend’s House? The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing Koker Trilogy takes a simple premise—a boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous, child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns, aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of rural Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Sensitive and profound, Where Is the Friend’s House? is shot through with all the beauty, tension, and wonder a single day can contain. And Life Goes On In the aftermath of a 1990 earthquake that left at least thirty thousand dead, Abbas Kiarostami returned to Koker, where his camera surveys not only devastation but also the teeming life in its wake. Blending fiction and reality into a playful, poignant road movie, And Life Goes On follows a film director who, along with his son, makes the trek to the region in hopes of finding out if the young star of Where Is the Friend’s House? is among the survivors, and discovers a resilient community pressing on in the face of tragedy. Finding beauty in the bleakest of circumstances, Kiarostami crafts a quietly majestic ode to the best of the human spirit. Through the Olive Trees Abbas Kiarostami takes meta-narrative gamesmanship to masterful new heights in the final installment of The Koker Trilogy. Unfolding “behind the scenes” of And Life Goes On, this film traces the complications that arise when the romantic misfortune of one of the actors—a young man who pines for the woman cast as his wife, even though, in real life, she will have nothing to do with him—creates turmoil on set and leaves the hapless director caught in the middle. An ineffably lovely, gentle human comedy steeped in the folkways of Iranian village life, Through the Olive Trees peels away layer after layer of artifice as it investigates the elusive, alchemical relationship between cinema and reality.

Release: December 15, 2020

$6.99

Description

Set during the making of And Life Goes On, this delicate metafiction follows a young man hopelessly in love with his co-star while life in the earthquake-stricken village quietly continues around them. Abbas Kiarostami crafts a graceful film about cinema, love, and resilience.

Release: August 27, 2019

$6.99

Description

Abbas Kiarostami first came to international attention for this wondrous, slyly self-referential series of films set in the rural northern-Iranian town of Koker. Poised delicately between fiction and documentary, comedy and tragedy, the lyrical fables in The Koker Trilogy exemplify both the gentle humanism and playful sleight of hand that define the director’s sensibility. With each successive film, Kiarostami takes us deeper into the behind-the-scenes “reality” of the film that preceded it, heightening our understanding of the complex network of human relationships that sustain both a movie set and a village. The result is a gradual outward zoom that reveals the cosmic majesty and mystery of ordinary life. THREE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 2K digital restorations of all three films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks • New audio commentary on And Life Goes On featuring Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum, coauthors of Abbas Kiarostami • Abbas Kiarostami: Truths and Dreams, a 1994 documentary • New interview with Abbas Kiarostami’s son Ahmad Kiarostami • New conversation between Iranian-film scholar Jamsheed Akrami and film critic Godfrey Cheshire • Conversation from 2015 between Kiarostami and film-festival programmer Peter Scarlet • New English subtitle translations • More! • PLUS: An essay by critic Godfrey Cheshire Where Is the Friend’s House? The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing Koker Trilogy takes a simple premise—a boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous, child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns, aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of rural Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Sensitive and profound, Where Is the Friend’s House? is shot through with all the beauty, tension, and wonder a single day can contain. And Life Goes On In the aftermath of a 1990 earthquake that left at least thirty thousand dead, Abbas Kiarostami returned to Koker, where his camera surveys not only devastation but also the teeming life in its wake. Blending fiction and reality into a playful, poignant road movie, And Life Goes On follows a film director who, along with his son, makes the trek to the region in hopes of finding out if the young star of Where Is the Friend’s House? is among the survivors, and discovers a resilient community pressing on in the face of tragedy. Finding beauty in the bleakest of circumstances, Kiarostami crafts a quietly majestic ode to the best of the human spirit. Through the Olive Trees Abbas Kiarostami takes meta-narrative gamesmanship to masterful new heights in the final installment of The Koker Trilogy. Unfolding “behind the scenes” of And Life Goes On, this film traces the complications that arise when the romantic misfortune of one of the actors—a young man who pines for the woman cast as his wife, even though, in real life, she will have nothing to do with him—creates turmoil on set and leaves the hapless director caught in the middle. An ineffably lovely, gentle human comedy steeped in the folkways of Iranian village life, Through the Olive Trees peels away layer after layer of artifice as it investigates the elusive, alchemical relationship between cinema and reality.

Release: July 21, 2020

$7.99

Description

The first Iranian film to win the Palme d’Or, this austere, emotionally complex drama by the great Abbas Kiarostami follows the middle-aged Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) as he drives around the hilly outskirts of Tehran looking for someone who will agree to dispose of his body after he commits suicide, a taboo under Islam. Extended conversations with three passengers (a soldier, a seminarian, and a taxidermist) elicit different views of mortality and individual choice. Operating at once as a closely observed, realistic story and a fable populated by archetypal figures, Taste of Cherry challenges the viewer to consider what often goes unexamined in everyday life. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack • Project, Abbas Kiarostami’s 39-minute 1997 sketch film for Taste of Cherry, made with the director’s son Bahman Kiarostami • New interview with Iranian film scholar Hamid Naficy • Rare 1997 interview with Abbas Kiarostami, conducted by Iranian film scholar Jamsheed Akrami • Trailer • New English subtitle translation • PLUS: An essay by critic A. S. Hamrah

Release: May 13, 2025

$7.99

Description

The mysteries of everyday life come into astonishing focus in one of Abbas Kiarostami’s greatest cinematic achievements. A slyly self-reflexive commentary on the director’s own artistic practice, The Wind Will Carry Us unfolds with unhurried majesty as it follows an undercover documentarian (Behzad Dorani) whose assignment to cover a small village’s funeral rites is continually frustrated by an elderly woman’s refusal to die. Along the way, though, he forges surprising, unsettling, and enlightening connections with those he meets. Suffused with Kiarostami’s love for people, poetry, and the arid beauty of rural Iran, this meditative masterpiece reflects upon the boundaries between intimacy and alienation, tradition and modernity, with the utmost grace. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES 4K restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack A Week with Kiarostami (1999), a documentary by Yuji Mohara on the making of the film Interview from 2002 with director Abbas Kiarostami New video essay presenting Kiarostami’s poetry narrated by Massoumeh Lahiji, a longtime translator and creative collaborator of the director’s Trailer New English subtitle translation PLUS: An essay by poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar