TEHRAN – “Homework”, world-renowned Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s 1989 narrative documentary film, will be reviewed at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art on Sunday.

Filmed in January and February 1988, the film consists almost exclusively of interviews with a number of pupils and two fathers of pupils at the Shahid Masumi Primary School in Tehran.

In the film, Kiarostami put questions to students at a public school: questions about homework, punishments and dreams of the future.

The result was a portrait of the generation that grew up during the Iran-Iraq war, trapped by uncertainty and a rigid upbringing.

Issues such as some parents’ illiteracy and their inability to help their children with homework are raised. The children don’t always succeed in hiding the more embarrassing aspects of their family life, including corporal punishment, poverty, etc.

In 2021, Iranian filmmakers Ashkan Nejati and Mehran Nematollahi co-directed “Tonight’s Homework” as a companion to Kiarostami’s “Homework”.

Now, some 30 years later, Nejati and Nematollahi repeat Kiarostami’s questions and come to the conclusion that the school system and society itself have changed dramatically. 

The gulf between rich and poor has grown far wider, and that has become evident in the schools. Parents, many of whom are illiterate, are unable to help their young ones, or are otherwise too busy with their careers to supervise homework. Any sense of interest or guidance is absent.

Two now-adult subjects of Kiarostami’s film agree that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the way responsibilities get dumped on the shoulders of teachers. The only thing that’s unchanged is the way the children reply in the approved manner—yes, of course, they’ve done their homework.

Photo: Celebrated filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami poses with two students interviewed in his 1989 documentary “Homework”.  

MMS/YAW