Abbas Kiarostami's Ten Most Beautifully Directed Films

Abbas Kiarostami is a well known and worldwide acclaimed Iranian director, writer and producer. He has written and directed around 40 plus films and documentaries. He is very passionate about photography, May be that's why his films has beautiful picturization and locations. Most Iranian films stories and documentaries based on female protagonists and their social-emotional struggle. But Abbas Kiarostami has a reputation for using child protagonists portray stories and his very brilliant at it. Let's have a look at Abbas Kiarostami's ten most beautifully pictured and directed films.

1. Where is the Friend's Home? (1987) 

 ***Gorgeous Film And One Of The Best Film On Child Psychology***

"Where Is My Friend's Home?" watches as eight year old Ahmed sneaks away from home and embarks on a quest to return a tattered notebook to a classmate. The classmate, young Mohammed Nematzedah, lives in another village. Ahmed never finds Mohammed's home, and so completes his friend's homework so that Mohammed won't get punished at school. "Good boy," a teacher says the following day. She's referring to Mohammed and his homework. Kiarostami's patting Ahmed on the back.

The performances are all convincingly natural and the camera could easily not have been there. Babek Ahmed Poor's Ahmed naturally steals the film and, although he doesn't show a great range he is as natural and as likable as the film required him to be – you forget he is acting and this could easily be fly-on-the-wall stuff.

It is a beautiful story, and it is a beautiful experience to sit and take in this magnificent film!

2. Close-Up (1990)

  ***A Notable Achievement And Well Crafted Film***

" 'Close-Up' Hailed By Famous Directors Like Tarantino, Martin Scorsese And Werner Herzog"

"Close-Up", a poor man who wants to make a movie to expose or transpose the suffering of the simple low-class worker (like himself). He commits the crime of using another known director's identity, lying to an upper-medium class family, just to get some resources for his film. We can see from his statements, later, that he wouldn't want to do any harm to the family. He just saw an easy way out of his daily routine and awareness of not having the money to make something.

All the credit must go to Kiarostami- a man whose art clearly is a synergy of lesser things. People tend to quote that Abbas Kiarostami's style is a slow paced coupled with dry documentary images, but I've found his films to be wonderfully unraveling puzzles and moments of perfect understanding. Close-Up is a film any lover of cinema should see, and even those who are vapid, because Hossain Sabzian is likely the best mirror those sorts will ever get.

3. Life, and Nothing More... (1992)

***Absorbing And Masterfully Filmed***

The story follows a filmmaker on a journey with his son across earthquake-ravage Iran to find two boys that were in his previous film, to see if they are still alive. Kiarostami follows the two in their car as their search progresses and they meet various people displaced by the earthquake along the way. It's an extraordinarily slow process.

Kiarostami presents life in such a naturalistic way that we are sitting in the back seat of the car taking the journey as well. That is the perfection of the this film, the real life, the carnage of life, the people striving for life, all add up to one up-lifting experience. You see none of the horrific footage of mangled bodies and uncontrollably hysterical victims that we usually associate with natural disasters. You only see people who have experienced tragedy, but continue to live and endure.

4. The White Balloon (1995) 

***Charming And Delightful To Watch***

"The White Ballon", a young girl is given a 500-toman banknote to buy a goldfish for the Iranian New Year. On the way to the market, she loses the money down a sewer grate, and spends the rest of the film trying to get it back, either ignored or aided by the strangers she meets.

Beautiful cinematography, memorable characters, and stunning direction backed by Kiarostami's expertly written script make for a great film. It is a simple story, simply done. The little girl that is the star isn't exactly a sympathetic character. Mostly because of her whining performance. The young actor who plays her brother practically steals the show. I hope to see more of him in the future. Having said all this, I do recommend the movie. 

5. Taste of Cherry (1997)

 ***Artistic And Pure Cinematic Brilliance***

"Mr. Bagheri: If you look at the four seasons, each season brings fruit. In summer, there's fruit, in autumn, too. Winter brings different fruit and spring, too. No mother can fill her fridge with such a variety of fruit for her children. No mother can do as much for her children as God does for His creatures. You want to refuse all that? You want to give it all up? You want to give up the taste of cherries? "

The story drives around a dusty wasteland, looking for help in committing suicide. Neither a soldier nor a seminary student will help him. A doctor asks him if he is willing to surrender all of the physical and emotional immediacies of life, just to end his unspecified suffering. The man takes too many sleeping pills and lies down in the grave he's dug, as the sounds of rain and nature, along with the darkness, enveloped him.

The film's cinematography is brilliant. The reddish tone given throughout to maintain the graveness of the matter, and the greenish tone at the end to depict wellness, is excellent! Of course, the director has due contribution in it..

Taste of Cherry is strongly recommended as a unique film by Abbas Kiarostami.Its usefulness comes from the fact that it prepares admirers of Abbas Kiarostami for other films directed by him.

6. The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)

  ***Simple, Poetic And Good Journey***

"Farzad: "What happens to the Good and Evil on Judgment day? "

Engineer: That's obvious. The Good go to hell and the Evil to heaven. Is that right?

Farzad: Yes.

Engineer: No. the Good go to heaven, the Evil go to hell. Hurry in and write that, then come back."

"The Wind Will Carry Us", the engineer is thrown into the village, he is alone and he is waiting for the death of an old villager. The stasis eventually dissolves when he leaves his role as observer and becomes involved, and we can move on, too.

It's a great attempt to depict the artist's philosophy of life. It is simple and complicated at the same time. Our beautiful and mysterious world, the tight connection between human and nature, our obsession with death and meaning of life and so many other unanswered questions.

A good film is largely what you make of it, and Kiarostami does set this film up to be very accessible to international viewers without specific knowledge of Iranian culture if they choose to give it a real shot.

7. Through the Olive Trees (1994) 

***Graceful, Emotional And Simple Drama***

"If short men only married short women they would have short children and no-one would be able to reach the top of the cupboard."

"Through The Olive Trees", opens with a film crew trying to cast for a movie in a provincial village, in the aftermath of A devastating earthquake which has claimed many, many lives. We then are shown that the remaining people are trying to rebuild their lives, picking up bits and pieces of the past, but with an eye to the future.example of these people are the boy and the girl who are selected to play the protagonists of the melodrama to be made.

A very sensitive and emotional film. Hussein's character, always dreaming and fantasizing about things that cannot be, is touching and endearing. The issue of fiction vs. reality, imagination vs. real life, is dealt with great wisdom and subtlety. One of Kiarostami's best.

8. Certified Copy (2010) 

***An Engaging, Beautiful And Mysterious Film***

"Elle: I know you hate me. There's nothing I can do about that. But at least try to be a little consistent."

"James Miller: I didn't mean to sound so cynical, but when I saw all their hopes and dreams in their eyes, I just couldn't support their illusion."

In "Certified Copy," a man and a woman who've just met go through all the rituals of courtship and marriage in a single afternoon. Or are they an actual married couple simply pretending to be strangers as a means of seeing their relationship from a fresh perspective and perhaps starting over again as a couple?

Juliette Binoche won the Best Actress award for this role, but she deserves an award for most roles she has had. She is beautiful and proves her talent is beyond any limitations when she talks in three different languages non stop without any sort of discomfort. Abbas Kiarostami is a genius man who created a masterpiece. I loved it how in some scenes he will place the camera on characters like they are talking or in their own point of view. 

9. Ten (2002)

***Not Perfect But A Good Hyper-Realistic Drama***

The central character is a divorced woman in post-revolutionary Iran. Her recurrent argument is with her young son, angry about his parents' divorce. She is torn between her son and her desire for independence. The other characters, representing women at different stages of life, carry on the argument with the driver about women's role in society.

I believe this movie provides a unique opportunity to touch deeply some of the important human interactions and find a real context to think about love, hate, relationship, parenting and the child's world. It's gripping, funny, eye-opening but also strikingly close-to-home.

10. Crimson Gold (2003)

***A Brave Attempt And A Modern Persian Drama***

"Winner of the Jury Award at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival but sadly banned in Iran."

Hussein's job is poorly paid pizza delivery and it cannot provide him with enough money to buy simple jewels for his future wife, but can clearly show him that some other people do not have such problems. His customers often have fun with prostitutes, buy modern, expensive jewels from abroad, have parties in luxury apartments and obviously do not have money-related problems while Hussein and his best friend and future brother-in-law are not even allowed to enter the fancy jewels store.

It's not only about Iran, as many reviewers consider. This film is a metaphor, and a metaphor is universal. The movie is banned in Iran while its director was not allowed to enter US to assist in the screening there. Director Jafar Panahi is banned in his own country and is suspected elsewhere as coming from his own country.

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