And Life Goes On: The Films of Abbas Kiarostami
Screening Dates
  • December 3, 2019 6:30
  • December 4, 2019 8:45

The movie is extraordinarily immersive and mysterious, drawing you into its delicately constructed mise-en-scène for clues … Even far away from home, Kiarostami is still Kiarostami.”

Eric Kohn, Indiewire

Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami’s feature follow-up to the Tuscany-made Certified Copy was filmed in Tokyo with an all-Japanese cast. Traversing the boundaries between reality and role-play in the director’s customary slippery fashion, the enigmatic drama concerns university student Akiko (Rin Takanashi), who moonlights as an upscale escort. Noriaki (Ryo Kase), her jealous boyfriend, doesn’t know about her sex work. Encountering Akiko with elderly widower Takashi (Tadashi Okuno), one of her clients, Noriaki assumes he’s Akiko’s grandfather — and Akiko and Takeshi keep up the pretense. In Kiarostami’s beautiful, languorous film, alluringly shot by Takeshi Kitano regular Katsumi Yanagijima, meaning, motivation, and identity prove never quite what they seem.

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