Persian Nowruz (New Year) Celebration Film Screening: Where Is the Friend’s House?

Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987). Directed by Abbas Kiarostami, drama/family, 83 min., NR

About the film
The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing trilogy of films set in the northern Iranian village of Koker takes a premise of fable-like simplicity—a boy searches for the home of his classmate whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous, child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Shot through with all the wonder, beauty, tension, and mystery one day can contain, Where Is the Friend’s House? established Kiarostami’s reputation as one of cinema’s most sensitive and profound humanists.

Photo: Janus Films