Abbas Kiarostami in his documentary 10 on Ten. 

The Film Society of Lincoln Center is proud to announce “A Close-Up of Abbas Kiarostami,” a 10-day retsrospective devoted to the Iranian master filmmaker. The series will run from February 8 – 17 and is certain to make the shortest month of the year a busy one for cinephiles.

“This retrospective offers a comprehensive look at a filmmaker who has excelled as a cinema artist working in all forms—fiction, non-fiction and shorts,” said Film Society's Director of Year-Round Programming, Robert Koehler. “Few living filmmakers deserve such a comprehensive and thorough survey.”

Thorough, indeed, as our retrospective traces the entirety of Kiarostami's career with screenings of two his very first features, The Experience (1973) and The Traveler (1974), and his most recent films including last year's Certified Copy and the recent NYFF50 selection Like Someone In Love, which will begin an extended theatrical run at the Film Society on February 15.


Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees. Image: FARABI CINEMA/KIAROSTAMI / THE KOBAL COLLECTION

Even the most devoted Kiarostami fans are sure to find something new in our retrospective. Certainly the filmmaker's crowning achievements will all be accounted for, including Taste of Cherry (NYFF '97), the unofficial “Koker Trilogy” (Where Is the Friend's Home?, Life and Nothing More, and Through the Olive Trees) and the modern masterwork from which the series gets its name, Close-Up.

But along with the more recognizable titles will be many lesser-seen works including “Solution No. 1,” a short film from the late 1970s about a young boy's walk home after failing as a hitchhiker; Fellow Citizen, a documentary that follows a traffic cop in Tehran; and “No”, a short documentary made by Kiarostami just three years ago that centers on a young girl's hopes for movie stardom.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Abbas Kiarostami is his chameleonic career that constantly manipulates the artifice of filmmaking and questions the basic foundations of storytelling in service of a distinct vision of life. His style, so unique yet universal in its appeal, refuses to be kept within the borders of his native Iran, as evidenced by his Japan-set Like Someone in Love. Beloved by critics, cinephiles, and fellow filmmakers alike, Kiarostami has amassed a body of work of a caliber rarely matched in the history of film, let alone modern cinema. Join us as we trace this path in all of its side-stepping, form-questioning brilliance.

“A Close-Up of Abbas Kiarostami” runs from February 8 – 17. For a full list of titles, check out the press release.