Abbas Kiarostami, Iranian filmmaker and Palme d’Or winner, has died aged 76, The Guardian reports. His close friend and Oscar-winning Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi has said, ‘he wasn’t just a filmmaker, he was a modern mystic, both in his cinema and his private life. He definitely paved ways for others and influenced a great deal of people. It’s not just the world of cinema that has lost a great man; the whole world has lost someone really great.’
Kiarostami first came to international prominence through his Koker trilogy, of which, Where Is the Friend’s Home? (1987), won him his first major award, the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno film festival. In 1997, Kiarostami was awarded the coveted Palme d’Or for Taste of Cherry.
Kiarostami was diagnosed with gastrointestinal cancer in March 2016 and died in Paris on 4 July 2016.
5 July 2016
