Abbas Kiarostami - The Koker Trilogy

[holyzombiejesus]

Tell me about this. Had it recommended and could feasibly buy the Blu-ray box on Criterion with Christmas vouchers (£60).

[sevendaughters]

It is fantastic. They're a trilogy in that the film before each is a film, rather than a direct continuation of a narrative in the traditional sense. The first is a wonderful bit of cinema magic with an all-timer of an ending. Life and Nothing More has a relationship with a real earthquake that devastated the area the first was shot in. Through the Olive Trees is sweet and melancholy, about love and film and women in Iran. There's also a moment in it that made me cry within a second of realising what was happening.

[Herbert Ashe]

Also looks like that boxset has Homework on it as well which is also pretty essential Kiarostami; nominally you'd give it the banal description 'children talking about their homework' or whatever, but of course it's incredibly penetrating on education, institutions and systems, and inevitably the role of the filmmaker in it as well.