TEHRAN – The Paris-based distributor MK2 Films will release Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s The Koker Trilogy on April 7, Nasrin Mirshab, the director of the DreamLab Films, the France-based international distributor of the film, has announced.

The trilogy is composed of “Where Is the Friend’s House?”, “And Life Goes On” and “Through the Olive Trees”, which all were shot on location in the rural northern Iranian town of Koker.

“Poised delicately between fiction and documentary, comedy and tragedy, the lyrical fables in The Koker Trilogy exemplify both the gentle humanism and the playful sleight of hand that define the director’s sensibility,” the Criterion Collection, the American distributor of the collection, wrote. 

“With each successive film, Kiarostami takes us deeper into the behind-the-scenes ‘reality’ of the film that preceded it, heightening our understanding of the complex network of human relationships that sustain both a movie set and a village. The result is a gradual outward zoom that reveals the cosmic majesty and mystery of ordinary life,” it added.

Mirshab also said that MK2 Films also plans to release director Mehdi Shadizadeh’s documentary “Along with the Wind” about the life of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami and his artistic career at the same time.

“The film skillfully depicts the various aspects of Kiarostami’s career and its eloquence that captured MK2 managers’ attention,” Mirshab said.

The film was screened at the Art and Experience Cinema halls on June 22, 2019, concurrent with the late director’s birthday.

Photo: Mohammad-Ali Keshavarz and schoolgirls from Koker act in a scene from “Through the Olive Trees”, one of Abbas Kiarostami’s movies from The Koker Trilogy. 

MMS/YAW