Leonardo da Vinci
93% Profile Match
Pedro J Pacheco, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons · Photograph of Abbas Kiarostami at the opening of the IBAFF film festival in Murcia, Spain, taken 4 March 2013 by Pedro J Pacheco and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by the photographer as own work in 2015 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. The file used is the photographer's own crop (685 x 791) of his 6000 x 4000 original; image metadata shows a Sony SLT-A65V camera and the capture date of 2013-03-04, consistent with the stated source. No upscaling. · CC BY-SA 4.0
film director · Contemporary
Abbas Kiarostami
1940–2016
Known For
artisticcultural
Not yet included in personality matching — the documented evidence doesn't yet cover enough of the personality model. Everything else on this page is fully available.
Trait Constellation
Key Achievements
Iranian film director who made the line between fiction and documentary his subject, in Close-Up, in which the real participants play themselves, and in the Koker trilogy.
His film Taste of Cherry shared the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival in 1997.
From ABC Africa he shot on digital video, and later made Certified Copy in Italy and Like Someone in Love in Japan, his two features outside Iran.
Moments That Reveal Them
In Close-Up, the man who had posed as a famous director, Hossain Sabzian, and the other real participants play themselves, and Kiarostami himself appears on screen interviewing them.
This is consistent with a willingness to depart from the conventions of fiction and documentary. Creative Originality
He explained that he liked to shoot characters in cars because it allowed natural two-shots and close-ups, and, in his view, a space where women have some freedom; Ten consists of long takes in a car.
This is consistent, by his own account, with testing a single formal constraint across several films. Experimentation
Turning Points
With ABC Africa (2001) he used a digital camera for the first time, saying a 35mm camera would have limited the work, and went on to make Ten on digital video.
This is consistent, by his own account, with changing medium when the old one limited the work. Adaptability
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Opposite Profile
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Sources
- Abbas Kiarostami (Q55210), verified live via the Wikidata API (2026-10-26): label 'Abbas Kiarostami', description 'Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer (1940-2016)', born 1940-06-22, died 2016-07-04, citizenship Iran, Korean label present. Orientation only; not used as support for any row.
- 'Abbas Kiarostami', Encyclopaedia Britannica biography, read in full. CANONICAL SIGNIFICANCE SOURCE: an Iranian filmmaker known for experimenting with the boundary between reality and fiction across a four-decade career; hired in 1969 by the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults to set up its film division; the Koker trilogy and Taste of Cherry (shared Palme d'Or, Cannes 1997) named as the key works. Reference-work summary; evaluative by nature.
- 'Abbas Kiarostami obituary', The Guardian, 4 July 2016, read in full: his path from painting, advertising, titles and children's-book illustration to the Institute's film department, summaries of Close-Up, the Koker films, Taste of Cherry, ABC Africa (his first digital-camera film), Ten, Shirin, Certified Copy and Like Someone in Love, and his poetry, photographs and a 2008 opera production. Includes his own quoted remarks on shooting people in cars and on why he preferred video. Independent obituary, admiring in tone; quoted remarks are self-report.
- Roger Ebert, review of 'Taste of Cherry', Chicago Sun-Times / RogerEbert.com (1998), read in full. COUNTER-VOICE: he judged the film boring and its style an affectation, in disagreement with critics Jonathan Rosenbaum and Dave Kehr who saw a masterpiece; he also records the Cannes premiere, the standing ovations mixed with boos, and the jury's decision to share the Palme d'Or. Independent, adversarial; confirms the austere, withholding method while disputing its worth.
- Jared Rapfogel, 'Close-Up: A Mirror Facing a Mirror', Senses of Cinema (2001), read in full: Close-Up as Kiarostami's fifth feature and the one that blurs fiction and documentary into an unclassifiable hybrid, with Hossain Sabzian and the other real participants (and Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf) playing themselves, and how the approach carried into his next film and wider Iranian cinema. Independent critical essay; admiring but analytical.
- 'In Memory of A.K.', obituary essay, Senses of Cinema issue 81 (2016), translated by Daniel Fairfax, read in full: a critic's account of Kiarostami's founding of the Institute's film department and its twenty years under him, his shift to digital with ABC Africa and Ten, gallery installations, poetry and photography, masterclasses, and films made outside Iran. Independent but retrospective and admiring.
- Wikimedia Commons file pages 'Abbas Kiarostami-Murcia.jpg' (original 6000 x 4000) and its crop 'Abbas Kiarostami-Murcia (cropped).jpg' (685 x 791), wikitext and image metadata read, checked for the portrait only.