Sometimes a revolution fits in a school backpack. In 1987, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami shot an 83-minute film about a boy who runs through mountain villages to return a notebook to his classmate. The film was called "Where Is the Friend's House?" — a line from a poem by the poet Sohrab Sepehri. The West saw in it a parable about the search for truth in a totalitarian society. Iranian censorship saw a harmless children's tale. Both sides were right, and both were blind to what actually happened: a language was born through which auteur cinema of the Middle East began speaking to the world.
Before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran produced up to 90 films a year — mostly commercial melodramas and action films following Hollywood templates. The revolution erased this industry within two years: cinemas were burned as breeding grounds for "Western decadence," film reels were destroyed, directors were sent into exile or forced into silence. By 1981, production had dropped to 20 films, and almost all of them were propaganda pieces about the war with Iraq or religious parables. World film festivals stopped looking toward Tehran — there was no longer an auteur voice there, only ideology.
By the time of the revolution, Abbas Kiarostami had already worked for 15 years at the Kanun institute (The Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults) — a state organization created under the Shah to produce educational films. The revolution left Kanun untouched: the new regime considered children's cinema safe, and the institute itself a useful tool for education. Kiarostami received a rare privilege: the freedom to shoot, as long as his stories remained "innocent." He understood that childhood was a Trojan horse. Inside a simple story about a boy and a notebook, you could hide everything: the absurdity of bureaucracy, adults' deaf ears to a child's voice, the search for moral choice in a world where rules matter more than people.
In 1987, Kiarostami came to the mountain village of Koker in northern Iran and shot "Where Is the Friend's House?" in three weeks with non-professional actors — schoolboys Babak and Ahmad Ahmadpour. The camera followed eight-year-old Ahmad, who mistakenly took home his classmate Nematzadeh's notebook. The teacher threatened Nematzadeh with expulsion if he came again without homework. Ahmad runs through a labyrinth of streets, asks passersby, knocks on doors — no one knows where his friend lives. Adults brush him off, scold him for disrespect, force him to buy bread or carry firewood. The film lasts like one held breath: 83 minutes without music, without montage tricks, without a climax. In the finale, Ahmad does the homework himself in his friend's notebook and slips it into class. The teacher doesn't notice the substitution. Nematzadeh is saved, but no one except the viewer knows what happened.
Iranian censorship passed the film without cuts: there were no women with uncovered heads, no criticism of Islam, no hint of politics. Western critics saw a metaphor for totalitarian society, where the system devours individuality. Both interpretations were correct, but the main thing was different: Kiarostami created cinema that spoke the language of universal ethics without the words "freedom" or "oppression." The door was open — all that remained was to find someone who would notice it.
The 42nd Locarno International Film Festival in 1989 was a strange place for a legend to be born. Locarno — not Cannes, not Venice, not even Berlin. The Swiss festival was famous for discovering experimental cinema, but its awards rarely guaranteed worldwide fame. "Where Is the Friend's House?" received the Bronze Leopard in the best film category — not the top prize, but enough to enter the field of vision of European distributors. And yet for the first two years after Locarno, the film remained nearly invisible: distribution was limited to art-house cinemas in Paris and London, print runs were microscopic, reviews appeared in narrow film journals like Cahiers du Cinéma, but not in the mainstream press.
Why didn't the West notice the film immediately? Because 1989 was the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Tiananmen massacre, the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Iran remained a pariah state after Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie that same 1989. Western media saw in Iran only ayatollahs and hostages, but not poetry. Kiarostami gave viewers none of the familiar markers of "dissident cinema": no prisons, no executions, no martyr heroes. Just a boy, a notebook, and endless zigzags of mountain paths.
The breakthrough happened through word-of-mouth among film critics. Jean-Luc Godard in a 1990 interview called "Where Is the Friend's House?" one of the three most important films of the decade — alongside "The Sacrifice" by Tarkovsky and "Koyaanisqatsi" by Reggio. Akira Kurosawa included the film on his list of favorites after viewing it at a private screening in Tokyo. These names worked as a detonator: by 1991, the film began showing at retrospectives, student screens, in museums of contemporary art. Kiarostami became a "discovery," though he himself had been making films for 20 years.
The main consequence of Locarno was not recognition, but precedent: an international festival showed for the first time after the revolution that auteur cinema existed in Iran that was not equivalent to state propaganda. This was a signal to young Iranian directors who until then didn't know if their work had even one viewer beyond the country's borders. Jafar Panahi, who would later shoot "The White Balloon" (1995) and "The Circle" (2000), recalled in an interview that he learned of Kiarostami's existence precisely from a report about Locarno in an Iranian newspaper. Panahi was then studying directing and thought the only way to make honest cinema in Iran was to emigrate. The Bronze Leopard proved the opposite: you could stay and speak truth in the language of metaphors that would pass through censorship like light through a crack.
The village of Koker on the map of Iran — a pinprick-sized point, 30 houses on the slope of the Zagros mountains, without asphalt or electricity in 1987. Kiarostami chose it not for exoticism, but for geometry: narrow streets folded into a labyrinth where each turn could be either right or a dead end. The camera followed Ahmad in real time, without montage jumps — the viewer got lost along with the hero, and this lostness became a physical experience, not a symbol. The West saw in this the aesthetics of Italian neorealism — Vittorio De Sica shot "Bicycle Thieves" (1948) by the same formula: a simple person, a simple goal, the city as obstacle. But Kiarostami added one element that the neorealists didn't have: the view from above.
In the key scene of the film, Ahmad climbs to the top of a hill, from where the entire village is visible — a scattering of white house cubes, identical to each other. The camera freezes for 15 seconds: the boy looks down, and the viewer understands that the task is unsolvable. The friend's house could be any of these cubes, and Ahmad has no map, no address, only stubbornness. This scene became iconographic: directors from Taiwan (Hou Hsiao-hsien) to Mexico (Alejandro González Iñárritu) later used the same device — the hero's gaze at an insurmountable landscape as a metaphor for existential choice.
After "Where Is the Friend's House?", Kiarostami returned to Koker twice: he shot "And Life Goes On" (1992) about an earthquake that destroyed the same village, and "Through the Olive Trees" (1994) about shooting the second film. The three films formed the "Koker Trilogy" — but these are not sequels, they're matryoshka dolls: each subsequent film includes the previous one as memory or film shoot. Western critics called this meta-cinema, but for Kiarostami it was simply honesty: he showed that cinema is not a window into reality, but another layer of reality, as fragile as Koker's clay walls.
Koker's geography became the grammar for the entire wave of Iranian cinema of the 1990s. Mohsen Makhmalbaf shot "Gabbeh" (1996) in a desert village where poverty and beauty existed simultaneously, without social didacticism. Samira Makhmalbaf (Mohsen's daughter) shot "The Apple" (1998) about two reclusive sisters in the slums of Tehran — the same principle: the camera doesn't judge or save, only observes. Jafar Panahi in "The White Balloon" (1995) turned Tehran's bazaar into the same labyrinth as Koker's streets: a girl loses money to buy a goldfish, and the entire film is her attempt to find a coin in the crowd. All these directors learned one thing from Kiarostami: don't explain the metaphor, build it from brick, clay, and actors' real steps on real earth.
Iranian censorship in the 1980s worked by simple rules: physical contact between men and women was forbidden, women singing, criticism of Islam and the revolution, depiction of government corruption. "Where Is the Friend's House?" violated not a single point: only men, boys, and old men are on screen, women in hijabs appear in the background, dialogues concern everyday things — notebooks, bread, lessons. Censors at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance approved the film without edits, seeing in it a pedagogical parable about the importance of mutual aid and respect for elders. They didn't see that the entire film was built on the absurdity of power: the teacher threatens a child with expulsion for a forgotten notebook, Ahmad's father beats his son for disobedience, an old man on the street lectures the boy about obedience instead of helping. Every adult in the film is a micro-tyrant, and the system of tyranny reproduces itself from school to family.
Kiarostami in an interview with the French magazine Positif (1992) explained his method: "Censorship forces you to be more precise. When you can't show directly, you have to show indirectly — and that's often stronger." He didn't fight censorship, he used its blindness as a tool. The West read the film as a political parable about conformism, but Kiarostami never publicly confirmed this interpretation — because any confirmation would make his further work in Iran impossible. He stayed on the edge: unclear enough for censorship, clear enough for a world audience.
This balance became a survival model for the next generation. Jafar Panahi shot films about women and children because their stories seemed "safe" to censors, but in reality were the most radical: "The Circle" (2000) showed how women in Iran live in a closed cycle of prohibitions — from birth to death. The film was banned in Iran immediately after release, but by then it had already received the Golden Lion in Venice. Asghar Farhadi in "A Separation" (2011) shot a film about divorce proceedings — seemingly a social drama without politics. But every court scene exposed how religious law turns personal tragedy into bureaucratic hell. Censorship passed the film because it didn't criticize the law directly, only showed its consequences. "A Separation" won the Oscar for best foreign film in 2012 — the first for Iran.
Kiarostami proved that metaphor is no weaker than direct statement if it's built on concrete details. Western directors often use symbols as decoration: a red rose means love, a broken mirror means personality collapse. Kiarostami did the opposite: the notebook was simply a notebook, but context — the teacher's threat, adults' indifference, the child's stubbornness — turned it into the axis of moral choice. Censorship doesn't ban concrete things, it bans ideas. Kiarostami hid ideas in things, and censors passed by like passing a stone on the road.
When "Taste of Cherry" by Abbas Kiarostami received the Palme d'Or at the 50th Cannes Film Festival in 1997 (sharing the prize with "The Eel" by Shohei Imamura), it wasn't just one director's triumph, but recognition that Iranian cinema had become a full-fledged school of world arthouse. The path from Locarno-1989 to Cannes-1997 took eight years, but during that time the entire map of festival cinema changed: if in the early 1990s Iranian films were rare at major festivals, by the end of the decade they had become regular competition participants and winners of top prizes.
The chain reaction began as early as 1995, when "The White Balloon" by Jafar Panahi (written by Kiarostami) received the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival — the prize for debut works. The film was shot by the same formula as "Where Is the Friend's House?": a child, a simple goal (buy a goldfish), the city as labyrinth, adults as obstacles. The Western press wrote about the "Kiarostami school," though Panahi himself insisted he learned not from Kiarostami but from life. That same 1995, "Gabbeh" by Mohsen Makhmalbaf made it into the Cannes Film Festival competition — the first time in 16 years that an Iranian film passed selection for the main program. Makhmalbaf didn't win, but his visual language — long takes, minimal dialogue, desert landscapes as metaphor for isolation — critics compared to Kiarostami, though Makhmalbaf had started shooting even before the revolution.
"Taste of Cherry" was radical even for Kiarostami: 95 minutes about a middle-aged man searching for someone willing to bury him after suicide. The hero drives around Tehran's suburbs, offers money to random passersby, conducts philosophical dialogues about the meaning of life and death. The film ends on a black screen — the viewer doesn't learn whether the hero carried out his plan. Iranian censorship banned the film's screening inside the country (suicide contradicts Islam), but by then Kiarostami was shooting for world distribution, not for Tehran. The Cannes jury was headed by Isabelle Adjani, and according to rumors, the decision about the winner was made after a fierce argument: part of the jury considered the film too slow and depressing, the other part — a masterpiece of existential prose. The compromise was sharing the prize with the Japanese film, but the symbolic effect was achieved: Iranian cinema officially entered the pantheon.
After Cannes-1997, the number of Iranian films at international festivals tripled over five years. "The Apple" by Samira Makhmalbaf (1998) made it into the Directors' Fortnight program at Cannes — a parallel section created in memory of the May 1968 events. "The Color of Paradise" by Majid Majidi (1999) received the Grand Prix at the Montreal Film Festival and an Oscar nomination. "The Circle" by Panahi (2000) won the Golden Lion in Venice — the second top prize for Iran in three years. Western distributors began buying Iranian films in packages, without even waiting for festival premieres: the company MK2 (France) bought rights to Kiarostami's entire catalog in 1998, including his early short films.
The domino effect wasn't limited to Iran. Turkish cinema experienced a renaissance in the 2000s: Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the Palme d'Or for "Winter Sleep" in 2014, and critics drew direct parallels with Kiarostami — long dialogues, static camera, ethical dilemmas without ready answers. Palestinian cinema received world recognition through "Divine Intervention" by Elia Suleiman (2002, Jury Prize at Cannes) — the film used the same method of poetic minimalism: almost no words, with black humor and metaphors that passed through political censorship. Ceylan and Suleiman in interviews called Kiarostami a reference point — not because they copied his style, but because he proved: you can make cinema about your country in the language of universal ethics, and the world will understand.
Without Locarno-1989 and "Where Is the Friend's House?", this path could have stretched over a decade. Kiarostami didn't invent poetic realism — its roots go back to Satyajit Ray (India, 1950s) and Yasujirō Ozu (Japan, 1930s-1960s). But he proved that this language works under conditions of harsh censorship and political isolation. The Palme d'Or of 1997 was not an award for one film, but recognition of a decade-long experiment: is it possible to create world cinema in a country the world doesn't want to see.
Imagine 1989 without Locarno, without the Bronze Leopard, without the first signal that cinema exists in Iran that is not equivalent to ideology. Jafar Panahi in this version doesn't learn about Kiarostami from the newspaper, doesn't understand that you can shoot within the system, and leaves for Europe — as Mohsen Makhmalbaf planned in the early 1990s, before the success of "Gabbeh" convinced him to stay. Samira Makhmalbaf doesn't shoot "The Apple" at 18, because she has no model proving that children's cinema can be a political statement. Majid Majidi remains a director of commercials because his project about a blind boy "The Color of Paradise" doesn't find financing — producers don't believe that arthouse from Iran will pay off in the world market.
By the mid-1990s, Iranian cinema in this alternative reality exists but remains a local phenomenon: several films pass through secondary festivals (Rotterdam, Fribourg), receive critics' prizes, but don't reach Cannes, Venice, or Berlin. Western distributors don't see commercial potential — arthouse without stars and special effects sells poorly, and Iran as a brand is associated with hostages and terrorism, not poetry. MK2 doesn't buy Kiarostami's catalog in 1998, because Kiarostami doesn't become a cult figure after a hypothetical failure at Locarno. "Taste of Cherry" is shot but doesn't make it into the Cannes-1997 competition — the selection jury sees no reason to invite a director whose previous film went unnoticed.
The Palme d'Or of 1997 in this version goes to another auteur — perhaps Lars von Trier for "Breaking the Waves", or Mike Leigh for "Secrets & Lies". Iranian cinema gets a 5-10 year reprieve: the breakthrough happens later, possibly through "The Circle" by Panahi (2000) or "A Separation" by Farhadi (2011), but by then the geography of world arthouse is already redrawn. Turkish cinema overtakes Iranian: Nuri Bilge Ceylan debuts at Cannes in 2003 with "Distant", and it's Turkey that becomes the new wave of the Middle East, not Iran. Palestinian cinema develops more slowly because Elia Suleiman doesn't have Kiarostami's example before him — how to shoot political cinema without direct agitation.
The main loss in this alternative reality is not specific films, but method. Without "Where Is the Friend's House?" and "Taste of Cherry", world cinema of the 2000s is poorer by one language: poetic minimalism under censorship. Western directors continue to shoot arthouse following the model of European avant-garde (Lars von Trier, the Dardenne brothers, Michael Haneke) — intellectual, cold, often provocative. Kiarostami proposed a different model: warm minimalism, where metaphor doesn't distance the viewer but draws them in through plot simplicity and heroes' humanity. This model influences Asian cinema (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Apichatpong Weerasethakul), Latin American (Lucrecia Martel, Carlos Reygadas), even American independent cinema (Kelly Reichardt, Ramin Bahrani).
If you remove the notebook from Ahmad's hands in 1987, the map of cinema won't collapse but will shift: the Middle East remains a blank spot for ten years longer, and several dozen directors either won't shoot their films, or will shoot them later, in a different context, with different intonations. The asteroid that Kiarostami launched at Locarno was tiny — a Bronze Leopard, not a Palme d'Or. But it hit the right point at the right time, when world cinema was searching for new voices after the collapse of the bipolar world. Iran became that voice not because it was ready, but because Kiarostami shot one film that censorship passed and the world heard.