Iranian film legend Abbas Kiarostami died July 4 at the age of 76 in France, thousands of miles away from his place of birth in Tehran, where he and other filmmakers ushered in the so-called Iranian New Wave. While Kiarostami had recently been in Iran receiving treatment for cancer, the news of his death has shocked Iranians and film lovers across the world.
“Iran has lost a towering figure in international cinema,” tweeted Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. He called the filmmaker “ostad,” an honorific that means "maestro." Culture Minister Ali Jannati called Kiarostami a humanist who introduced a new cinema that brought the Iranian arts to the world. Majid Majidi, another Iranian New Wave filmmaker who most recently directed the government-funded mega-budget film about the Prophet Muhammad, said that Kiarostami “was not just a filmmaker, he was a philosopher.” Academy Award-winning director Asghar Farhadi, who became an international name with his 2011 film “A Separation,” credited Kiarostami for paving the way for him and other film directors.
