The most acclaimed and influential of Iran’s major filmmakers, Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016) has graced the world with his humanity and imagination throughout a nearly five-decade career. Often applying a deft philosophical touch to simple issues and excavating deeper truths about life with bold experiments, Kiarostami’s cinema invokes introspection and greater possibilities for his audience, allowing each of us to correspond his films to our own worlds with new understandings.

Join film critic, author and filmmaker Godfrey Cheshire as he shares his insights and reflects on Kiarostami’s body of work and his impact on world cinema. The talk will be moderated by Singaporean filmmaker Tan Bee Thiam.  This discussion will stream live online on AFA’s Facebook and Youtube channels on Thursday, 5 August 2021 at 7pm SGT (7am EST).

Godfrey Cheshire is a New York-based film critic and filmmaker whose writings on Iranian cinema have appeared in publications including the New York Times, Variety, Newsweek, Film Comment and the Village Voice. His book Conversations with Kiarostami (2019) contains the only in-depth interviews Kiarostami ever gave about his early career.

Tan Bee Thiam directed Kopi Julia (short film, 2013), Tiong Bahru Social Club (2020), and co-directed Fundamentally Happy (2015). An alumnus of Berlinale Talents and Rotterdam Lab, he produced Revenge of the Pontianak (2019), Demons (2018), Snakeskin (2015), 03-FLATS (2014), As You Were (2014), Eclipses (2013), Red Dragonflies (2010), In the House of Straw (2009) and White Days (2009).

This event is presented as part of AFA’s Retrospective: Abbas Kiarostami programme