Abbas Kiarostami's Cinema of Life: From Homework to Like Someone in Love

Standing apart from celebrated Iranian ideals of war and martyrdom, revolutionary filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami was known as a man who praised life and celebrated it in all his works. Creating films for more than 40 years during times of unending war and political turmoil, Kiarostami promoted the Sufi tradition of seeing God as part of nature and the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian ideal of environmental protection.

Kiarostami’s self-image as a citizen of the world, his renunciation of war, and his con...