Through The Olive Trees- Abbas Kiarostami ✦ Trusted & Fast

Kiarostami (the real one) is playing a cruel, beautiful joke on his audience. We are rooting for Hossein, despite his arrogance. We want the fiction to win. We want the poor boy to get the girl. But the film refuses to give us the easy satisfaction of a Hollywood romance.

Through the Olive Trees (Persian: زیر درختان زیتون, Zir-e Derakhtān-e Zeytūn ) is the final film in Abbas Kiarostami’s informal “Koker Trilogy,” following Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987) and And Life Goes On… (1992). Released in 1994, the film is a masterful exercise in cinematic self-reflexivity, blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction, director and subject, actor and character. It won the prestigious Prix de la mise en scène (Best Director) at the Cannes Film Festival, cementing Kiarostami’s reputation as a leading figure of the Iranian New Wave. Through the olive trees- Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees (1994) is a luminous meditation on the interplay between life and cinema, serving as the final installment of his acclaimed Koker Trilogy Kiarostami (the real one) is playing a cruel,