Abbas Kiarostami’s Childhood Films
18 Episodes
Long before he became one of the most renowned artists in world cinema, the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career at the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (a.k.a. Kanoon) in Tehran, where he honed his distinctive style and themes and initiated a three-decade-long string of films made about or for children. From his very first short THE BREAD AND ALLEY (which the director called the “mother of all my films”) to underseen early revelations like EXPERIENCE and THE TRAVELER to his beloved international breakthrough WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE?, these graceful, playful, and deceptively simple works use the small, relatable struggles of children to point to major universal truths about society, ethics, morality, and the human condition.
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Godfrey Cheshire on Abbas Kiarostami’s Childhood Films
Episode 1
The following introduction by critic Godfrey Cheshire—whose latest book is “In the Time of Kiarostami”—was recorded in 2022.
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1:13:29Episode 2
The Traveler
Episode 2
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1974 • Iran
Starring Hassan Darabi, Pare Gol AtashjamehAbbas Kiarostami’s first feature focuses on a boy in a provincial city so avid to get to Tehran to see a soccer match that he’ll lie to adults and cheat other kids. A quest film that’s also a study of youthful...
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1:23:48Episode 3
First Graders
Episode 3
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1984 • Iran
Inspired by his work at Kanoon and his own sons’ schooling, the first of Abbas Kiarostami’s two documentary features about education looks in on a schoolyard of chanting, playful boys but mainly transpires in the office of a supervisor who has to deal w...
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1:23:23Episode 4
Where Is the Friend’s House?
Episode 4
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1987 • Iran
The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing KOKER TRILOGY takes a simple premise—a boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous, child’s-eye adventure of ...
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Homework
Episode 5
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1989 • Iran
In Abbas Kiarostami’s second documentary feature about education, the filmmaker himself asks the questions, probing a succession of invariably cute first- and second-graders about their home situations and the schoolwork they must do there. It emerges t...
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1:35:20Episode 6
And Life Goes On
Episode 6
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1992 • Iran
Starring Farhad Kheradmand, Pouya Payvar, Hossein RezaiIn the aftermath of the 1990 earthquake in Iran that left fifty thousand dead, Abbas Kiarostami returned to Koker, where his camera surveys not only devastation but also the teeming life in its wak...
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1:27:32Episode 7
ABC Africa
Episode 7
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 2001 • Iran
Starring Abbas Kiarostami, Seifollah SamadianIn 2000, Abbas Kiarostami traveled to Africa at the request of the United Nations to document a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Uganda, where 1.5 million children had been orphaned by civil war and AIDS. Wo...
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12:04Episode 8
The Bread and Alley
Episode 8
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1970 • Iran
Starring Reza Hashemi, Mehdi Shahravanfar“The mother of all my films,” according to Abbas Kiarostami, starts out as a breezily observed anecdote about a boy wending his way home through Tehran alleys carrying a loaf of bread. Variations on both the boy...
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Breaktime
Episode 9
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1972 • Iran
Starring Sirous HassanpourDisciplined at school for breaking a window, a boy joins throngs of his schoolmates as they make a cacophonous exit into Tehran’s streets. He then briefly joins an impromptu soccer game but disrupts it by stealing the ball and...
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56:31Episode 10
Experience
Episode 10
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1973 • Iran
Starring Parviz Naderi, Hossein Yarmohammadi, Andre GovalovishBased on a story by Amir Naderi, who also cowrote the film, this slice of a fourteen-year-old boy’s life follows his efforts to fend for himself in the big city, working as a tea server and ...
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So Can I
Episode 11
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1975 • Iran
The first of Abbas Kiarostami’s films made for, rather than about, children was an experiment in combining live action and animation, done in collaboration with animator Nafiseh Riahi. As two schoolboys watch animated views of animals’ actions—kangaroos...
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05:47Episode 12
Two Solutions for One Problem
Episode 12
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1975 • Iran
This simple moral tale seems to prefigure WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE? Two young schoolboys, Dara and Nader, are friends until Dara returns Nader’s notebook torn and Nader retaliates in kind, setting off an escalating battle that leads to destruction of...
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59:57Episode 13
A Wedding Suit
Episode 13
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1976 • Iran
Starring Mohammad Fassih, Mehdi Nekoueï, Massoud ZandIn a trilevel shopping arcade, a teenage boy who works for a tailor is besieged by two other boys who want to borrow a new suit to wear on a social outing before it’s turned over to its owner. One of...
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16:33Episode 14
The Colors
Episode 14
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1976 • Iran
Ostensibly a film for children, this picture-book essay about the range of hues that brighten our world has the air of a delightfully playful formalistic exercise. As a narrator runs though the colors one by one, Abbas Kiarostami shows us where each app...
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17:20Episode 15
Tribute to Teachers
Episode 15
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1977 • Iran
An assignment from Iran’s Ministry of Education, this documentary from the last years of the Pahlavi dynasty includes interviews with officials who predictably praise teaching as a sacred, noble, and honorable profession. The teachers who are also inter...
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48:13Episode 16
First Case, Second Case
Episode 16
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1979 • Iran
Starring Mehdi Azadbakht, Mohammadreza Barati, Hedayat Matin DaftariMade in the spring of 1979, not long after the shah’s overthrow, this extraordinary film serves as a Rorschach blot for people in a revolutionary mindset. Abbas Kiarostami stages two v...
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Toothache
Episode 17
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1980 • Iran
Though much of this film by Abbas Kiarostami is a straightforward lecture about dental hygiene delivered by a dentist facing the camera, it still manages to be persuasively Kiarostami-esque in its description of young Mohammad-Reza’s life at home and sc...
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17:41Episode 18
Orderly or Disorderly
Episode 18
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1981 • Iran
The first shot shows students descending a staircase in calm, orderly fashion, then the second details the same action as a chaotic rush. Separated by slates and director Abbas Kiarostami’s voice intoning, “Sound, camera,” subsequent sequences describe ...