Iranian leaders mourn loss of acclaimed director Kiarostami

“Abbas Kiarostami’s disinct and profound view of life and his inviting humans to peace and friendship will be (regarded as) a lasting achievement in the 7th Art (cinema)”, President Rouhani said in a message posted on his Twitter account on Tuesday.

The 1990 film Close-Up also helped increase the recognition of the Iranian director in the West, it is based on the real life story of a man who impersonated a film-maker and conned his family into believing they would star in it and starred those involved playing themselves. His 1997 film “Taste of Cherry” won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Award winning Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has passed away in Paris where he was undergoing treatment at a hospital.

He directed many short and feature films, but “Where Is the Friend’s Home?“, the story of a schoolboy who scours a neighboring village for a classmate’s home to return an important notebook, won him a national reputation.

Among the most glowing tributes to the Palme d’Or victor was from New York’s The Film Stage magazine, which tweeted simply: “the world may have lost its greatest filmmaker”. “He was a true gentleman and, truly, one of our great artists”, the Associated Press reported.

Born in Tehran, Kiarostami started the film department at Kanun, Iran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. He had left Iran last week for medical treatment.

Kiarostami’s death came as huge shock to Iranian cineastes and cultural officials.

Kiarostami’s global successes in the late 1980s included an unofficial trilogy of films called the Koker trilogy, in which the fictional world of each film is placed in the fictional world of the previous film. His films are a breath of fresh air in narrative and style and has influenced generations of film makers after him. “But his films were unfortunately not seen as much in Iran”.

Over the years, even though his films were never overtly political (although they could easily be seen as Iranian sociopolitical fable), he found filmmaking increasingly hard within Iran under the government censorship. Every scene in “Taste of Cherry” and “Where is the Friend’s House” are overflowing with beauty and surprise, he said.

He travelled the world in his later years, making films such as “Certified Copy” in Italy and “Like Someone in Love” in Japan.

Kiarostami leaves two sons, Ahmad and Bahman.