Abbas Kiarostami

Bread and Alley

Bread and Alley

“The mother of all my films,” according to Abbas Kiarostami, starts out as a breezily observed anecdote about a boy wending his way home through Tehran alleys carrying a loaf of bread. Variations on both the boy and the old man he sees and begins to follow will factor into future Kiarostami films, as will the use of “dead time,” the journey structure, and the poetic articulation of space. The final scene, involving a dog and a door, ends things on a note of wry ambiguity.

Film Info

  • Iran
  • 1970
  • 12 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • Persian

Available In

Collector's Set

Eclipse Series 47: Abbas Kiarostami—Early Shorts and Features

Eclipse Series 47: Abbas Kiarostami—Early Shorts and Features

Blu-ray Box Set

3 Discs

$55.96

Bread and Alley
Cast
Reza Hashemi
Mehdi Shahravanfar
Credits
Director
Abbas Kiarostami
Writer
Taghi Kiarostami
Cinematography
Mehrdad Fakhimi
Producer
Abbas Kiarostami
Editor
Manuchehr Oliai

Current

Abbas Kiarostami’s Early Shorts and Features: Poetic Solutions to Philosophical Problems
Abbas Kiarostami’s Early Shorts and Features: Poetic Solutions to Philosophical Problems

Though the first two decades of the Iranian filmmaker’s career have long been underappreciated, this fertile period yielded philosophical and restlessly innovative works that reinvigorated both documentary and narrative-fiction cinema.

By Ehsan Khoshbakht