Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, Kiarostami’s TASTE OF CHERRY is an emotionally complex meditation on life and death. Middle-aged Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) drives through the hilly outskirts of Tehran, searching for someone to rescue or bury him. Along the way, he picks up three passengers, all from different walks of life, eliciting different views on mortality and individual choice.

“The film has a remarkable austerity and starkness; watching it is like being waylaid by the Ancient Mariner, who grips you with a strange and terrible message in his tale. It is Kiarostami's greatest film.” —Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

“Kiarostami, like no other filmmaker, has a vision of human scale that is simultaneously epic and precisely minuscule…a gorgeous, rough-hewn soliloquy about regaining his zest for life…is a simple, eloquent parable of the senses opening to the refreshment of life's simple pleasures.” —Stephen Holden, New York Times 

“Abbas Kiarostami’s cinema has long been a ‘humanitarian’ one...His sparse narrative economy, comprised of spaces and ellipsis, thread together episodes and present experiences that require the audience to make a leap of imagination or understanding.” —Michael Price, Senses of Cinema?

The Belcourt Theatre does not provide advisories about subject matter or potential triggering content, as sensitivities vary from person to person.

Beyond the synopses, trailers and review links on our website, other sources of information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media and IMDb, as well as through general internet searches.

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