— A personal gaze into the stillness, resistance, and quiet revolutions of an extraordinary filmmaker
“I prefer the films that put their arms around you gently, rather than grabbing you by the collar.”
— Abbas Kiarostami
There are films that scream, and others that whisper.
The cinema of Abbas Kiarostami does neither — it breathes.
It breathes dust, silence, poetry, human fragility, and the dignity of those the world often overlooks.
Discovering Kiarostami’s work is not just a cinephile’s pleasure — it’s an initiation into a different way of seeing. Of listening. Of being. His films unearth the quiet dramas hidden in the corners of daily life and give them space to unfold, as tenderly as a breeze brushing across a cracked windowpane.
🪶 1. "Homework" (1989): A child’s silence louder than any scream
This deceptively simple documentary, Mashgh (Homework), is made up almost entirely of interviews with young Iranian schoolboys. Kiarostami asks them direct questions about their homework, their family life, and how much help they receive from their parents.
What emerges is a quietly radical portrait of a generation caught between authoritarian education, patriarchal discipline, and the emotional desolation of post-war Iran. The children, often too nervous to answer, reveal more in their silences than their words. Their faces — alternately blank, fearful, or overly rehearsed — speak volumes about institutionalized pressure and the loss of childhood freedom.
At one moment, a boy cannot stop repeating the word "punishment." Another stammers as he tries to explain why he is afraid of his father. The film's real shock lies in its restraint. There is no voiceover, no moralizing, no dramatic arc. Just gaze, presence, and truth — the Kiarostami way.
It is a documentary that says everything about politics by never naming it. Through children’s trembling voices, it becomes an indictment of a society where obedience replaces understanding. And somehow, in this minimalism, it becomes universal.
🌿 2. "Where Is the Friend’s House?" (1987): A quest as an act of resistance
This gem of a film follows young Ahmad, a boy in a northern Iranian village, as he tries to return a notebook to his classmate in danger of being expelled. That’s it. And yet, within this modest storyline lies a quiet epic of empathy, persistence, and moral clarity.
The film unfolds like a children’s fable, but with profound political and philosophical undertones. In Ahmad’s determined walk from village to village — facing indifference, misdirection, and adult apathy — we see the birth of personal responsibility. His mission becomes a metaphor for resistance against rigidity, injustice, and the adult world’s detachment from kindness.
Nature is a protagonist in Kiarostami’s cinema, and here it surrounds Ahmad like both companion and obstacle. The landscapes are dusty, textured, and endlessly poetic. The camera lingers. Kiarostami doesn’t hurry. He lets the child’s sincerity glow, making the simplest journey feel momentous.
This film teaches us that kindness — true, uncalculated kindness — is an act of rebellion.
🎭 3. "Close-Up" (1990): Truth, lies, and the desperate beauty of pretending
In Close-Up, fiction and reality blur to the point of vertigo. Based on a true event, the film re-enacts the story of Hossein Sabzian, a poor man who impersonated the famous director Mohsen Makhmalbaf in order to gain the trust of a family and live among them for a few days.
But Kiarostami doesn’t judge him. He invites him.
He casts the real people involved — the family, the judge, and Sabzian himself — to re-enact the events. And in doing so, he dissolves the boundary between cinema and life. What we watch is not a trick, but a revelation: that cinema can contain both performance and truth, both guilt and grace.
Sabzian becomes an almost mythical figure — not because he lied, but because his lie was born from longing. From the hunger to be seen, to be someone else, to be part of art. Kiarostami lets him speak. And as he speaks, we understand something deeply human: sometimes, pretending is the most honest thing a person can do.
This film, quietly, asks the question: who gets to tell stories? Who gets to be heard? And in doing so, it becomes one of the greatest films about cinema ever made.
🌒 Conclusion: The world through his lens, and mine
Watching Abbas Kiarostami’s films is like being slowly unraveled. There are no heroes, no villains — just people, shadows, trees, dust, and the occasional stubborn flower. His camera doesn't intrude. It waits. It listens. And through this patient gaze, we begin to remember what we’ve forgotten in the noise of modern life: that every moment, every person, contains a world.
For me, his work is not just cinema.
It is a way of returning to the essential.
It is the poetry of everyday resistance, the music of footsteps in empty streets, the philosophy of doing what is right even when no one is watching.
And when I look again at a child walking down a road, or a man caught between silence and speech, I think: Kiarostami was here.
And so, perhaps, was I.
Written by LadyyofShalott — a cinephile, dreamer, and lover of poetic truths hidden in quiet frames.
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