Taste Of Cherry Details

Sharing the Palme d'Or at Cannes with Shohei Imamura's The Eel, Abbas Kiarostami's unconventional road movie is as much about the filmic process as morality, mortality or modern Iran. The action centres on world-weary, middle-aged Homayoon Irshadi, as he cruises the suburbs of Tehran in search of someone willing to transgress Islamic law by burying him after his suicide. Each person he propositions has symbolic significance, including a Kurdistani soldier and an Afghan seminary student, before he finally finds a taxidermist, who accepts the reward to pay his son's medical bills. Endlessly fascinating, with the subtle shifts in landscape and palette quite masterly.

A teasing meditation on death and the simpler joys of life, told in a series of episodic meetings that never reach a conclusion; what matters is the journey, not the destination.