Top Ranked Films of Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami
7 titles (17th), but 67th in points with 12,625

These are all the films of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s that made the top 1000 in our 2011 update of the Top Ranked 1000 Films on the Net, all polls. He actually tied for 17th among directors with this many titles, but the low rankings didn't add much to his point total.

1. Close-up (1990) #255
2. Taste of Cherry, A (1997) #522
3. Wind Will Carry Us, The (1999) #537
4. Ten (2002) #874
5. And Life Goes On (1991) #947
6. Certified Copy (2010) #907
7. Where is the Friend's Home? (1987) #948

also, just out of the top 1000
8. Through the Olive Trees (1994) #1011

I saw the top ranked film here, Close-Up, as my intro to Kiarostami, and was a bit disappointed. The film had a refreshing immediacy and seemed real, yet it was also amateurish, had terrible sound (at times unintelligible), and would not have made it to tv in the west just due to it’s lack of professional craftmanship. The film also reeked of propaganda, as an Iranian court was shown, which appeared to be thoughtful and fair (maybe they are, but not according to western media bias), so you also realize that the film had to clear Iranian censorship and likely could not be critical in any way.

I haven’t seen the rest of these, but will likely watch a couple more before I give up on Kiarostami’s professionalism, or decide that he’s an authorized shill for a psychotic regime that wants to further “God’s promised apocalypse on earth”. Not surprising that all these fundamentalist fanatics claim to follow God, yet they don’t trust in the deity to control events, so they want to cause the events themselves. (Because the long promised apocalypse has still never arrived, thousands of years later – maybe one day it’ll happen but so far it’s the worst prophecy in mankind’s history, as it’s zero for about 3000 years so far, and nearly every generation has claimed "this is the end time").

See the full list of top ranked 100 directors here: Top Ranked 100 Directors, 2011 Edition