Abbas Kiarostami

Widely hailed as one of the world's most exciting filmmakers during the 1990s, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami has spent most of the last decade seeming purposefully on the margins, making documentaries and experimental films. With "Certified Copy," which opened in Los Angeles and New York on Friday and will be available on cable video on demand March 23, he returns to narrative feature filmmaking while staking out bold new territory. Shooting a feature outside Iran for the first time, Kiarostami has crafted an elusive look at art and love set amid the beauty of a small Tuscan town.

"In the City of Sylvia," a 2007 film by the Spanish writer and director José Luis Guerín, runs a mere 80 minutes and has almost no dialogue and the barest semblance of a plot. But from seemingly minimal means, Guerín fashions a gorgeous object and an endlessly suggestive experience: a love story, a city symphony, a surrealist fable and a self-reflexive meditation on the thrill and the danger of looking. A cult hit on the festival circuit — new to DVD May 24 from Cinema Guild — "Sylvia" follows the romantic quest of an unnamed young man over three days in the French city of Strasbourg.

A conceptual tour de force and a brainiac's road movie, Abbas Kiarostami's "Ten" goes from chilly abstraction to hot emotion in less than 60 seconds. The setup couldn't be simpler or the dividends more rarefied. Without the camera ever leaving the car, an unnamed woman (Mania Akbari) drives around Tehran, running errands and giving lifts to passengers.

Widely hailed as one of the world's most exciting filmmakers during the 1990s, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami has spent most of the last decade seeming purposefully on the margins, making documentaries and experimental films. With "Certified Copy," which opened in Los Angeles and New York on Friday and will be available on cable video on demand March 23, he returns to narrative feature filmmaking while staking out bold new territory. Shooting a feature outside Iran for the first time, Kiarostami has crafted an elusive look at art and love set amid the beauty of a small Tuscan town.

When Satyajit Ray died in 1992, renowned Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa mourned the loss of the greatest social realist filmmaker who ever lived. But when he saw "Through the Olive Trees" by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, Kurosawa said he had found Ray's incarnation: "God has found the right person to take Satyajit Ray's place."

Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami may be an inspiring figure to international film buffs and an irritation to Iran's censors, but to his first female star, he is like "a little boy in love with life." Mania Akbari is not a professional actress. She is a visual artist whose marriage; 10-year-old son, Amin Maher; divorce and remarriage have a fictional reflection in Kiarostami's "Ten," his first film dealing solely and provocatively with the lives of Iranian women. It opens Friday in L.A.

"Certified Copy," Abbas Kiarostami's lovely labyrinth of a film, is best seen without having read reviews that divulge what the director reveals ? or hints at ? only gradually (this one won't). The two-hander's teases and twists carry an electric charge, particularly in the riveting performance of Juliette Binoche, by turns dithery, fevered and open-hearted. She plays the unnamed French owner of an antique shop in Tuscany, raising a tween son who challenges her every move ? when he bothers to look up from his video game.

Paris, Tokyo, Uganda, New York, Cannes, Montreal, Beirut, Rome, Washington, D.C., and Durham, N.C., are just some of the stops Abbas Kiarostami has made during an incredible year for the unique Iranian director. Now at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which has held a three-week retrospective of his films, Kiarostami will be honored Saturday. (The director had been scheduled to attend the tribute, but he had to cancel because of illness.

"The Taste of Cherry" (unrated): Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami ("Through the Olive Trees") took home the Gold Palm award at Cannes for this seemingly simple story of a depressed man driving through the hilly outskirts of Tehran looking for someone to oversee his suicide. Become emotionally involved at your own risk.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive's 18th Annual Celebration of Iranian Cinema, running over eight nights between Friday and April 20, is nothing if not eclectic. The opening film, "Persian Carpet (Farsh-E Irani)," is an anthology of contributions from 15 directors, including the legendary Abbas Kiarostami, each interpreting the titular subject via a unique aesthetic. Also of note is the forceful war drama "Night Bus (Otobous-E Shahbaneh)" (Sunday), written and directed by Kiumars Pourahmad.

"Certified Copy," Abbas Kiarostami's lovely labyrinth of a film, is best seen without having read reviews that divulge what the director reveals ? or hints at ? only gradually (this one won't). The two-hander's teases and twists carry an electric charge, particularly in the riveting performance of Juliette Binoche, by turns dithery, fevered and open-hearted. She plays the unnamed French owner of an antique shop in Tuscany, raising a tween son who challenges her every move ? when he bothers to look up from his video game.

Here's a look at some of the winners at this year's festivals. SUNDANCE Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic: "Winter's Bone," directed by Debra Granik World Cinema Jury Prize, Dramatic: "Animal Kingdom," directed by David Michôd Audience Award, U.S. Dramatic: "HappyThankYouMorePlease," directed by Josh Radnor Audience Award, Documentary: "Waiting for 'Superman,'" directed by Davis Guggenheim World Cinema Audience...

The Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, who turns 70 this month, was at the Cannes Film Festival recently with a movie that marked several firsts in a distinguished career. "Certified Copy," which will be released in the United States by IFC Films, is Kiarostami's first fiction feature to be shot outside Iran and his first with an internationally known star (Juliette Binoche, who won the best actress prize at Cannes). At first glance, this multilingual two-hander set in picturesque Tuscany has little to do with the postmodern neorealism that Kiarostami honed in such films as "Taste of Cherry" (1997)

Iranian poetry, Ramin Bahrani says over coffee in a SoHo cafe, has a tradition known as tazmin, in which a poet takes an image, or a verse, from a distinguished predecessor, and crafts something original out of the borrowed fragment. Bahrani writes no poetry, and his own roots are found more in North Carolina, where he was born and raised, than in his parents' native Iran, but the concept of tazmin is deeply relevant to his latest film, "Goodbye Solo," which opens in Los Angeles on Friday.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive's 18th Annual Celebration of Iranian Cinema, running over eight nights between Friday and April 20, is nothing if not eclectic. The opening film, "Persian Carpet (Farsh-E Irani)," is an anthology of contributions from 15 directors, including the legendary Abbas Kiarostami, each interpreting the titular subject via a unique aesthetic. Also of note is the forceful war drama "Night Bus (Otobous-E Shahbaneh)" (Sunday), written and directed by Kiumars Pourahmad.

When Indian director Satyajit Ray died in 1992, Akira Kurosawa praised him as "the greatest social realist filmmaker who ever lived." But when Kurosawa saw Abbas Kiarostami's "Through the Olive Trees" (1994), he said of the Iranian writer-director that "God has found the right person to take Satyajit Ray's place." "Through the Olive Trees" is one of the 19 features and shorts that compose LACMA's Life and So Much More: The Films of Abbas Kiarostami, screening Friday and Saturday evenings, Oct.

Here's a look at some of the winners at this year's festivals. SUNDANCE Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic: "Winter's Bone," directed by Debra Granik World Cinema Jury Prize, Dramatic: "Animal Kingdom," directed by David Michôd Audience Award, U.S. Dramatic: "HappyThankYouMorePlease," directed by Josh Radnor Audience Award, Documentary: "Waiting for 'Superman,'" directed by Davis Guggenheim World Cinema Audience...

When Indian director Satyajit Ray died in 1992, Akira Kurosawa praised him as "the greatest social realist filmmaker who ever lived." But when Kurosawa saw Abbas Kiarostami's "Through the Olive Trees" (1994), he said of the Iranian writer-director that "God has found the right person to take Satyajit Ray's place." "Through the Olive Trees" is one of the 19 features and shorts that compose LACMA's Life and So Much More: The Films of Abbas Kiarostami, screening Friday and Saturday evenings, Oct.

A conceptual tour de force and a brainiac's road movie, Abbas Kiarostami's "Ten" goes from chilly abstraction to hot emotion in less than 60 seconds. The setup couldn't be simpler or the dividends more rarefied. Without the camera ever leaving the car, an unnamed woman (Mania Akbari) drives around Tehran, running errands and giving lifts to passengers.

Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami may be an inspiring figure to international film buffs and an irritation to Iran's censors, but to his first female star, he is like "a little boy in love with life." Mania Akbari is not a professional actress. She is a visual artist whose marriage; 10-year-old son, Amin Maher; divorce and remarriage have a fictional reflection in Kiarostami's "Ten," his first film dealing solely and provocatively with the lives of Iranian women. It opens Friday in L.A.