Tehran, July 5, IRNA – International media and prominent figures of cinema have extensively reacted to the death of acclaimed Iranian film maker Abbas Kiarostami, who died in a Paris hospital on July 4.


'The world may have lost its greatest filmmaker' Abbas Kiarostami, the New York cinema magazine The Film Stage has tweeted.

'It’s not just the world of cinema that has lost a great man; the whole world has lost someone really great,' the Guardian has quoted Oscar-winning Iranian film-maker Asghar Farhadi as saying.

Kiarostami’s upward ascension as a major auteur was confirmed in 1997, when his seventh feature, Taste of Cherry – a study of a man driving around looking for someone to help him commit suicide – was awarded the Palme d’Or (jointly, with The Eel, directed by Shohei Imamura), the Guardian reported.

The Koker trilogy, series of three films, (1987–94), Close-Up (1990), Taste of Cherry (1997) – which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year, The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), Certified Copy (2010), Like Someone in Love (2012) and Friend's Home are among famous and popular works of Mr Kiarostami.

'Over the last 20 years, almost every time you saw a movie by the Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami, who died today (Monday), you could feel it calming your appetite for sensation, slowing your attention span and maybe even your heartbeat. You could feel lured into a different state of being,' this was the impressive note the Variety made about Kiarostami.

Through a title, also, the Variety wrote ' The Iranian Master Abbas Kiarostami Turned the Cinema Into a Mesmerizing Meditation.'

'There is a kind of action that goes on in a Kiarostami films. It’s the profound exchange of energy between the audience and the filmmaker — the action of the inner spirit,' the Variety said talking about Kiarostami's films.

'You could say that the elusiveness of human connection was Kiarostami’s theme.'
'To be or not to be? 'Taste of Cherry' suggests how close to despair ordinary life can take us,' the Variety wrote about his film.

BBC also noted about Iranian Kiarostami like this: 'Kiarostami was hugely influential in world cinema. The French-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard is reputed to have said: 'Film begins with DW Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami.''

Also, IndieWire described Kiarostami as the famous filmmaker known for his 'Taste of Cherry.'

About his 'Taste of Cherry', Kiarostami had said, 'But in truth, it is a suggestion to live,' the US News and World Report wrote while quoting him as saying about his film which had been accused by some of encouraging suicide.

Kiarostami, who was undergoing treatment in France for cancer, had been invited to join the Academy Awards members on June 29.

By IRNA