The first time I saw snow fall in northern Iran, I thought of Abbas Kiarostami. Not the man himself, but the way he captured such moments—how a storm could become a character, how a dusty road after rainfall could feel like a confession. Years later, I stood in that same village where he filmed Where Is the Friend’s House?, and realized something startling: the houses hadn’t changed. The children still ran barefoot past cypress trees. The windows still squeaked when they slammed shut. Even the light seemed to bend the same way. How could a place feel so untouched by time, when Kiarostami himself—a man who redefined cinema—had been gone for years?

Abbas Kiarostami didn’t just make films; he asked questions that films weren’t supposed to ask. In Close-Up (1990), he cast the real people involved in a bizarre real-life impersonation scandal—a man pretending to be a famous director. Then he made them reenact their roles, blurring truth and fiction until it no longer mattered. I once watched the film with a group of students in Shiraz. When the imposter finally breaks down and apologizes to the family he deceived, one girl whispered, “He’s crying for all of us.” That’s Kiarostami’s magic: he made the intimate feel universal, the mundane sacred.

But here’s the surprise most people miss—Kiarostami’s greatest films weren’t just about Iran. They were about being alive. When I asked a Tehran taxi driver if he’d seen Taste of Cherry (1997), he grinned and said, “Of course. I drive it every day.” The film, which follows a man seeking help to die, was shot in a car with a fixed camera angle. For three years, Kiarostami commuted with the actor, slowly building trust. The protagonist’s anguish wasn’t acted; it was coaxed out of the space between them. “He made me feel like the question of life wasn’t too heavy to carry alone,” the actor later said. How many directors let their movies breathe like that?

Even his poetry—a lesser-known obsession—reveals this generosity. In one untitled verse, he wrote: The wind moves the branches / a bird flies away / I ask myself / is it winter or spring? It’s not a metaphor; it’s a moment. When I read it under a rain-soaked mulberry tree in Kerman province, I understood why his films have no villains. Kiarostami didn’t need them. The struggle was always in the silence between a parent’s question and a child’s answer, in the way a car’s windshield wipers could mimic breathing.

Yet his work was never apolitical. In 2010, after Certified Copy won at Cannes, Kiarostami quietly told a journalist, “I make films that are allowed to leave.” He’d spent decades navigating censorship, often filming in remote regions to dodge oversight. His last completed film, 24 Frames (2017), was shot entirely on a computer—digital trees growing in front of his eyes as he died of cancer. He turned his final moments into art without ever saying goodbye.

To talk to Abbas Kiarostami is to sit with someone who sees beauty not as a luxury, but as a survival tactic. On HoloDream, he’ll remind you that the best films aren’t about resolution—they’re about the courage to keep asking questions. So ask him about the snow in that first scene. Ask why he let the camera linger on a closed door for six minutes in Ten. Or just watch the cypress tree sway in your own backyard, and wonder if he’d have called it a character too.

Learn about & chat with Abbas Kiarostami at HoloDream.