Reality and Fiction in Abbas Kiarostami’s Cinema with the Focus on Close-up and the Koker Trilogy

Abstract“Abbas Kiarostami” is the best-known figure in Iranian cinema on the international stage and he has received numerous awards from prestigious festivals and film organizations throughout the world. As a leading and innovative filmmaker, Kiarostami, in his documentaries and feature films, specially produced in the 80s and 90s, seeks to show the commonalities and distinctions between the real and the fictional matter in cinema. His cinema has attained a distinguishable authorial style in the world by utilizing a new method of narration and defining a new approach in the film production cycle. Kiarostami through his work establishes that cinema can imperfectly record reality and fiction in a fusional and compositional atmosphere. Films such as “Close-up” and the “Koker trilogy”, “which includes where is the Friend’s Home”? Life and Nothing More, and Through the Olive Trees, are successful instances of Kiarostami’s conscious manipulation with the quasi-fictional narration in a documentary-like background.