Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997) +Q&A with film critic A.S. Hamrah
Location: Rubenstein Arts Center Film Theater
Taste of Cherry
(Abbas Kiarostami, 1997, 99 min, Iran, Persian with English subtitles, DCP)
-- Q&A to follow with film critic A.S. Hamrah
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.
Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival
“The loose stories, contemplative style, and relative absence of plot in Kiarostami’s films free us from feeling manipulated, even as we are patiently led to endings that are quite often emotionally shattering.” – A.S. Hamrah
“Kiarostami, like no other filmmaker, has a vision of human scale that is simultaneously epic and precisely minuscule.” – New York Times
"A Masterpiece." – Film Comment
A. S. Hamrah is the author of The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018 and Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing, 2019-2025. He is the film critic for n+1 and writes for a number of other publications, including Harper’s, Bookforum, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Fast Company, The Baffler, and the Criterion Collection. He has worked as a movie theater projectionist, a semiotic brand analyst in the television industry, a political pollster, a football cinematographer, and for the film director Raúl Ruiz. He produced the feature-length documentary Bunker, directed by Jenny Perlin, which was the opening night film at the Museum of Modern Art’s Doc Fortnight in 2022. He lives in New York.
Related Event:
Monday, March 2, 2026 7:00pm
A reading, book signing, and conversation with A.S. Hamrah, film critic for The Baffler, n+1, Harper’s, and more. Hamrah’s two new collections of film writing are must-reads for anyone trying to make sense of filmgoing in this time of corporate culturemaking.
Presented by Duke Cinematic Arts, Experimental Film Lab @ Franklin Humanities Institute, Movie Loft, Letters Bookshop, Skin and Bones Theater, and Film Durham.
Screen/Society screenings are free and open to the public.
Parking Info: https://artscenter.duke.edu/parking
COVID-19 Info: https://cinematicarts.duke.edu/covid-19-information
