Film + discussion

The first Iranian film to win the Palme d’Or, Abbas Kiarostami’s TASTE OF CHERRY comes to Yale as part of a special, two-day Humanities Now event with Joan Copjec.

The film follows Mr. Badii, an enigmatic middle-aged man, as he drives through the rural outskirts of Tehran, searching for someone willing to bury his body after his death by suicide. What unfolds is not a narrative of despair, but a poetic meditation on mortality, personal agency, and the quiet pleasures of everyday life. Through Mr. Badii’s long conversations with three passengers—a young soldier, a seminarian, and an elderly taxidermist—Kiarostami constructs what critic Stephen Holden called “a vision of human scale that is simultaneously epic and minuscule.”  

Followed by a discussion with Joan Copjec and Omnia El Shakry (Department of History)

We hope you’ll join us the day before the screening for Joan Copjec’s lecture on Kiarostami’s cinema.