Where is the Friend's House?
Abbas Kiarostami / IR, 1988 / 84 min.
Kiarostami’s heart-warming tale of a boy returning an exercise book forms the basis for this wonderful film made with non-professional actors and set in a desolate landscape.
An Iranian boy accidentally takes his friend’s exercise book home from school with him. Because his friend is already close to being expelled, he travels to the next village to find his friend’s home. The journey is far from safe: Ahmed doesn’t know his friend’s exact address. Kiarostami’s heart-warming tale was selected for the competition for the Golden Leopard in Locarno.
Where Is the Friend's House? screens to accompany the exhibition on Nuri Bilge Ceylan in Eye. Programmer Thijs Havens: “You could see Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s trilogy Kasaba, Clouds of May and Uzak as the parallel to Kiarostami’s 'Koker trilogy': these are all films connected at different levels of fiction and non-fiction. In both cases, two of the films in the trilogy deal with the making-of or after-effects of the shooting period for one of the other films, with the director himself (played by an actor) also appearing as a character.”
Continuation
The one film is a continuation of the other. The film that follows is a commentary on its predecessor, which in turn is linked to the film that came before. Kiarostami's And Life Goes On (also screening in Eye) is a look back at the origins of Where Is the Friend's House?, which was shot in the Koker earthquake zone. In Through the Olive Trees (also screening), we see a filmmaker directing an actor playing a director looking for the principal actors for Where Is the Friend's House? All of these films had a great influence on Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
This is part of
Special screenings
Details
Director
Abbas Kiarostami
Production year
1988
Country
IR
Original title
Khaneh-je doost kojast?
Length
84 min.
Language
Persian
Subtitles
ENG or FRA or NLD
Format
DCP, 35mm
Part of
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Eye Filmmuseum presents the first Dutch exhibition devoted to the work of acclaimed Turkish filmmaker and photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan. For this occasion, the museum is bringing together his prize-winning films and lesser-known landscape photographs for the very first time. That combination reveals not only Ceylan’s masterly photographic eye and sense of composition, but also the deeply compassionate way he explores universal themes from a Turkish perspective.
Share your love for film and become a member of the Eye Society.