Staying in Iran after the revolution and making films nowhere else for over two decades, however, meant Kiarostami was able to continue the work he had started in the 1970s, which concentrated on children, classroom life, families, domestic spaces, and the aftermath of natural disasters, all the things Iranian cinema was allowed to show. Kiarostami forged a unique style of contemporary neorealism and wed it to a new kind of consciousness of the cinema as medium. Thinking about his films while watching an American film leads to a sobering realization: all the things that Kiarostami could not show in his films became the only things Hollywood filmmakers chose to show in theirs. What he showed in his films were the things abandoned by Hollywood: conversation, friendship, understanding, compassion, and empathy.

When watching Kiarostami films, one also has a great sense of another kind of freedom not found in Hollywood movies, nor in most European art films: freedom from the creeping realization that a film we are watching was made by a cynical shit or a self-deluded megalomaniac. Kiarostami’s films were not responding to the formulaic considerations Hollywood labors under in pursuit of big opening weekends, and their maker was not seeking fame or awards by making them. His loose stories, contemplative style, and the absence of certain plot points and backstory free us from this sense of manipulation even as we are patiently led to endings that are quite often emotionally shattering.