Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 2001 • Iran
Starring Abbas Kiarostami, Seifollah Samadian
In 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. Working outside of Iran and shooting on digital video for the first time, he returned with this disarmingly hopeful look at a country where death hovers ever-present, yet life—embodied by the playful spirit of the kids who peer curiously into his camera’s searching, humane lens—flows on undiminished. Part idiosyncratic travelogue, part ode to childhood wonder, ABC AFRICA is quintessential Kiarostami in its movingly philosophical reflection on human resilience in the face of adversity.
Up Next in Abbas Kiarostami’s Childhood Films
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The Bread and Alley
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
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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Experience
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 ...
