Abbas Kiarostami

Taste of Cherry

Taste of Cherry

The first Iranian film to win the Palme d’Or, this austere, emotionally complex drama by the great
Abbas Kiarostami follows the enigmatic Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) as he drives around the hilly outskirts of Tehran looking for someone who will agree to bury him after he commits suicide, a taboo under Islam. Extended conversations with three passengers
(a soldier, a seminarian, and a taxidermist) elicit different views on mortality and individual choice. Operating at once as a closely observed, realistic story and a fable populated by archetypal figures, Taste of Cherry challenges the viewer to consider what often goes unexamined in everyday life.

Film Info

  • Iran
  • 1997
  • 99 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.66:1
  • Persian
  • Spine #45

Special Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Project (1997), a thirty-nine-minute sketch film for Taste of Cherry that Abbas Kiarostami made with his son Bahman Kiarostami
  • New interview with film scholar Hamid Naficy
  • Interview from 1997 with Abbas Kiarostami, conducted by film scholar Jamsheed Akrami
  • Program from 2017 on Kiarostami’s use of landscape featuring film scholar Kristin Thompson
  • Trailer
  • PLUS: An essay by critic A. S. Hamrah

New cover by Michael Boland

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Project (1997), a thirty-nine-minute sketch film for Taste of Cherry that Abbas Kiarostami made with his son Bahman Kiarostami
  • New interview with film scholar Hamid Naficy
  • Interview from 1997 with Abbas Kiarostami, conducted by film scholar Jamsheed Akrami
  • Program from 2017 on Kiarostami’s use of landscape featuring film scholar Kristin Thompson
  • Trailer
  • PLUS: An essay by critic A. S. Hamrah

New cover by Michael Boland

Taste of Cherry
Cast
Homayoun Ershadi
Mr. Badii
Abdol Hossein Bagheri
Taxidermist
Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari
Worker
Safar Ali Moradi
Soldier
Mir Hossein Noori
Seminarist
Credits
Director
Abbas Kiarostami
Written and produced by
Abbas Kiarostami
Cinematography
Homayoun Payvar
Sound
Jahangir Mirshekari
Mix
Mohammad Reza Delpak
First assistant director
Hassan Yektapanah
Second assistant director
Bahman Kiarostami

Current

Taste of Cherry: Stay Near the Tree
Taste of Cherry: Stay Near the Tree

The first Iranian film to win the Palme d’Or, Abbas Kiarostami’s tale of one man’s despair leaves the question of whether life is worth living unanswered.

By A. S. Hamrah

Taste of Cherry
Taste of Cherry
In Abbas Kiarostami’s universe, it might be said, there are no things, only relations between things. Likewise, in his cinema: no films, only relations between films—and within them. And between them and us.Three and one. The most celebrated of I…

By Godfrey Cheshire

Three Weeks of Kiarostami
Three Weeks of Kiarostami

The late Iranian master takes the spotlight in a magisterial retrospective—the most comprehensive survey of his career ever mounted—opening today at New York’s IFC Center.

Connor Jessup’s Top 10
Connor Jessup’s Top 10

Canadian actor and filmmaker Connor Jessup’s third short film, Lira’s Forest, is an official selection at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.

Seventy Years of Cannes: Taste of Cherry in 1997
Seventy Years of Cannes: Taste of Cherry in 1997
The vast majority of Cannes top-prize recipients have been either European or American, which makes it all the more worthwhile to note those winners that come from historically underrepresented nations. At the 1997 ceremony, Iran’s flourishing film…

By Neil McGlone

Kristin Thompson on Kiarostami’s Landscapes
Kristin Thompson on Kiarostami’s Landscapes
Over on the Criterion Channel, we’ve premiered our latest installment of Observations on Film Art, an original program that examines elements of cinematic style and how great filmmakers utilize them in their work. Hosted by film-studies scholar Kri…
Kiarostami in Cleveland

Repertory Picks

Kiarostami in Cleveland

The Cinematheque at the Cleveland Institute of Art pays tribute to the late Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami with a screening of his international breakthrough, Taste of Cherry, a haunting meditation on life and death that follows a man over the cours