Film Course: Abbas Kiarostami – Poetic Solutions to Philosophical Problems

Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) and his deeply humanist, formally complex cinema have long been central to Iranian film culture. Yet Kiarostami was far more than an Iranian director. From the early 1970s onward, he consciously pursued a cinema of universal scope – one stripped of all unnecessary elements and refined to its essential form.

This course investigates Kiarostami’s style and cinematic trademarks, from his experimental children’s films to his radical rethinking of the boundaries between documentary and fiction, and finally to his later digital minimalism. The course covers every film in his filmography – from early shorts to video works – and examines his practice as a title sequence designer and photographer. Many of Kiarostami’s films were made for Kanoon, the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. This course will explore Kanoon’s institutional methods of production and situate Kiarostami’s work in comparison with that of his contemporaries within the organization.

The course will further explore Kiarostami’s long career by first situating his work within Iranian cinema, particularly the Iranian New Wave of the 1960s and 1970s, and then placing it within broader Iranian cultural traditions, with special attention to poetry and architecture.

Led by Ehsan Khoshbakht, the course will be accompanied by film clips and screenings, as well as presentations of Kiarostami’s photographic and poetic work. 

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Ehsan Khoshbakht is a filmmaker, film festival director, and curator. He serves as co-director of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. His most recent film, Celluloid Underground, premiered at the London Film Festival. His latest book, Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema, 1945–60, was published by Les Éditions de l’Œil in Paris, accompanying a retrospective of the same name at the Locarno Film Festival, which will travel to BFI Southbank in May 2026.