And Life Goes On: The Films of Abbas Kiarostami
Screening Dates
  • October 23, 2019 8:30
  • October 28, 2019 6:30
New Restorations

The Traveller
(Mosafer)
Iran 1974
Abbas Kiarostami
74 min. DCP

Kiarostami’s first full-length feature recalls Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. When soccer-mad Qassem, a delinquent 12-year-old living in a provincial town, learns that his favourite team is playing in distant Tehran, he does everything he possibly can, including lying, cheating, and stealing, to try to get to the game. Through improvised performances in real-life situations, and a poet’s feel for the heartbreak of youth, Kiarostami views the travels, travails, and frequent scams of this pint-sized Odysseus with nonjudgmental precision and heartfelt compassion, setting the stage for a bittersweet ending to the film, and a remarkable beginning to a film career” (Jason Sanders, Pacific Film Archive).


preceded by 

The Bread and Alley
(Nan va koutcheh)
Iran 1970
Abbas Kiarostami
12 min. DCP

The mother of all my films,” said Abbas Kiarostami of his very first work, a short in which a young boy making his way home with a loaf of bread finds his passage blocked by a menacing dog.

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