Wind Will Carry Us, TheIran / France
1999, 118min.
 Script/Dir./Edit: Abbas Kiarostami, Dir of Phot.: Mahmoud Kalari, Compos.: Peyman Yazdanian, Sound: Mohammad Reza Delpak, Prod.: Marin Karmitz, Abbas Kiarostami.
Cast: Behzad Dourani, Noghre Asadi, Roushan Karam Elmi, Bahman Ghobadi, Shahpour Ghobadi, Reihan Heidari, Masood Mansouri, Ali Reza Naderi, Frangis Rahsepar.
An engineer travels to a remote Iranian village on an inexplicable assignment that involves unseen assistants digging holes. The men working near the hill turn out to be the main characters of the film’s setting. From time to time, the engineer drives up the steep incline to receive calls on his cell phone-calls he couldn’t hear clearly in the village below. What types of calls are these? Is an elderly woman dying? Is it about a search for buried treasure? The exhumation of dead bodies? This remains unclear, because we do not hear the other end of the conversation. The jeep and the cell phone dominating this modern hero’s life are devoid of purpose; only impulses and emotional content seem significant. Nor are the traditional lives of villagers any more meaningful. The film is similar to Becket’s theatre of the absurd, Waiting for Godot.
Awards
“CinemAvvenire” Award (Best Film), FIPRESCI Prize, Grand Special Jury Prize, Venice IFF.
| Kiarostami, Abbas Abbas Kiarostami (born 1940, Teheran)
From 1960 to 1968 he started his cinematographic career designing credits and directing advertisements. With a friend in 1969, Kiarostami founded the Cinematographic Department of the Institute for Children and Young Adults Intellectual Development (Kanoon) that, in the course of the years, has produced a relevant number of high quality Iranian movies, by directors such as: A. Naderi, B. Beyzai, D.Mehrjui, E. Forozesh, J. Panahi, Sobrah Sh. Saless...
By 1970 Abbas Kiarostami directs numerous short films and then features. He prefers to work with non-actors in natural surroundings. At the end of the 1980s Kiarostami obtains well-deserved international recognition. In 1989 he won the Bronze Pardo at Locarno Festival; in 1992 he won the Rossellini Prize at Cannes for his career; in 1997 The Taste of Cherries obtained the Golden Palme at the Cannes Film Festival; The Wind Will Take Us Away won the Grand Jury Prize of the Venice Mostra in 1999. On the 13th of November, 1997 UNESCO bestowed upon him the “Fellini” medal.
Filmography
Bread and Alley (1970), The Break time (1972), The Experiment (1973), The Traveler (1974), So Can I (1975), Two Solutions for a Single Problem (1975), The Colors (1976), Wedding Suit (1976), The Report (1977) Tribute to Teachers (1977), How to Make Use of Our Free Time (1977), Solution No. 1 (1978), First Incident, Second Incident (1979), Oral Hygiene (1980), Regularly or Irregularly (1981), The Chorus (1982), Fellow Citizen (1983), Toothache (1983) First Graders (1984), The Key (1987) Homework (1989) The Journey (1994) Through the Olive Trees (1994), Taste of Cherry (1997), Willow and Wind (1999), Crimson Gold (2003), Five Dedicated to Ozu (2003).
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