TEHRAN — Six films by the late Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami will be screened at the 11th Ulsan Ulju Mountain Film Festival in South Korea, tracing several decades of his career and highlighting recurring themes of childhood, movement, roads and everyday life.
The selection includes three films produced by the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults — The Bread and Alley, Orderly or Disorderly and The Chorus — alongside Take Me Home (2016), No (2010) and Ten (2002).
Festival programmer Jinna Lee said the films form part of the Human section, organized this year around the theme of “challenge.” The program highlights Kiarostami’s ability to cross the boundaries between fiction and documentary and to transform ordinary experiences into distinctive cinematic works.
According to the festival, Ten, made possible in part by the freedom offered by digital filmmaking and featuring natural performances by non-professional actors, can be traced to the formal experiments of Orderly or Disorderly.
The three early shorts also reflect lessons Kiarostami developed during his years at the institute, including seeing the world from a child’s perspective, working with non-professional performers and turning small incidents of everyday life into stories.
The festival has arranged the selection as a journey from The Bread and Alley, his 1970 debut short, to Take Me Home, his final short. The pairing highlights the importance of alleys, movement and journeys throughout his cinema.
The 11th Ulsan Ulju Mountain Film Festival will be held in South Korea from Sept. 18 to 22, with all six Kiarostami films presented in its Human section.