Ahmad Kiarostami, interview with the producer and President of the Kiarostami Foundation.

At the 44th Bergamo Film Meeting, producer and president of the Kiarostami Foundation, Ahmad Kiarostami is presenting the Homage the festival is dedicating to his father, director Abbas Kiarostami.

On the tenth anniversary of his passing, the 44th BFM has built a retrospective of twelve films including  10 on Ten (2004), 24 Frames (2017), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), Certified Copy (2010) and Ten (2002).

Abbas Kiarostami’s legacy

Abbas Kiarostami (Tehran, 1940 – Paris, 2016) was one of the most important directors, screenwriters and visual artists of contemporary cinema, a central figure of Iran’s second “nouvelle vague” and a leading author of international auteur cinema.

He was also a poet, photographer and visual artist, with his work exhibited in major international museums such as the MoMA in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the National Museum of Cinema in Turin and, posthumously, the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

To talk about his cinema and his legacy, on Wednesday 11 March, his son and producer Ahmad, is holding a seminar about his work.

Quoting the 44th Bergamo Film Meeting’s words: Abbas Kiarostami will be remembered above all as a seminal figure in international cinema, a master at transforming simplicity into profundity and turning film into a space for poetic, ethical and universal meditation.

Ahmad Kiarostami’s work as producer

Ahmad Kiarostami, who hasn’t lived in his country, Iran for almost 25 years, is not only preserving his father’s work and legacy with the foundation but he’s also working as a producer.

In 2014, Ahmad launched the Docunight project, screening Iranian documentaries in 25 cities across America and Canada. He also produced documentaries such as Coup 53 by Taghi Amirani (2019), about the coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.

In the last part of the interview, Ahmad Kiarostami talks about his country Iran, his hopes for the future. He also reflects on the role cinema has in raising awareness, open people’s eyes to try and avoid this polarization the world is getting divided into.