The film [Close Up] made itself, to a large extent. The characters involved were very real, I wasn’t directing the actors so much as being directed by them. So it was a very particular film.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIIt seems that film-makers are being divided between those working in digital and those who are not. I think it’s not something predetermined – it all depends on what project we have in mind, and on that basis we choose the medium.
More Abbas Kiarostami Quotes
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As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that’s less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I spend a lot of time doing carpentry. Sometimes there is nothing that gives me the contentment that sawing a piece of wood does.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I do believe in [Robert] Bresson’s method of creation through omission, not through addition.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I don’t have very complete scripts for my films. I have a general outline and a character in my mind, and I make no notes until I find the character who’s in my mind in reality.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
Having an international voice is not really about whether we speak Persian or any other language.
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I prefer the countryside to cities. This is also true of my films: I have made more films in rural societies, and villages, than in towns.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I think it was [Jean-Luc] Godard who said that life is nothing but a bad copy of film, but then our ambition must be to make better films and better shapes of forms that are given in life.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I think life is so difficult to catch, it’s so furtive, that a copy, a film, can in no way catch it and represent it.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
If I do continue to have the opportunity to work in Iran, that’s very much what I’d prefer to do.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I only make notes, I don’t write dialogues in full. And the notes are very much based on my knowledge of person.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
This was pointed out to me by somebody who referred to the paintings of Rembrandt and his use of light: some elements are highlighted while others are obscured or even pushed back into the dark.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I think being someone in love is so hard to define, so temporary, because retrospectively we often deny the state in which we were in love.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
Close-Up is a very particular film in my oeuvre. It’s a film that was made in a very particular way; mainly because I didn’t really have the time to think about how to go about making the film.
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When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground, and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit.
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I didn’t just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI






