Abbas Kiarostami，born in Tehran in 1940，is a pioneer of Iranian cinema and is considered to be one of today’s most controversial and influential filmmakers.

Kiarostami started his career and worked through the 1960’s as an advertising designer and illustrator - making commercials，designing posters，creating credit titles for films，and illustrating children’s books. In 1969 he helped to set up a filmmaking department at the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. The department went on to become one of Iran’s most recognized film studios，producing Kiarostami’s films as well as films of other Iranian filmmakers. Kiarostami’s films include fiction features，educational shorts，feature-length documentaries，and a series of films for television. Kiarostami has made more than 20 films since his，and the Institute’s，debut film Bread and Alley，a 12 minute piece about a boy’s walk home from school.

Kiarostami’s films started to be shown outside of Iran in the 1980’s. Where is the Friend’s Home? (1987)，And Life Goes On (1992) - the first of Kiarostami’s films to be shown at the New York Film Festival - and Through the Olive Trees (1994) were the films that made Kiarostami’s reputation in the West. In 1996 he was honored with a retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center，New York，and in 1997 he came to the Cannes Film Festival with Taste of Cherry and won the grand prize，becoming the first Iranian director ever to win the Palme d’Or. In 1999 Kiarostami received the Special Jury Prize for The Wind Will Carry Us and in 2000 he traveled to Uganda at the request of the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development to make the documentary ABC Africa. In 2002 he premiered at Cannes his controversial film Ten，which dealt with Iranian women and was not approved by Iranian censorship officials.

Kiarostami has a sparse，down to earth but eloquent style. He prefers to work with non-professional actors and on location，and until 1991 his favorite subject was children. He shows the physical reality of the people of Iran，and their dreams. While being firmly grounded in a Persian way of thinking，in Persian philosophy，his films are universally understood. The poetic lyricism and presentation of his films have brought comparisons with the films of Satyajit Ray，Vittorio de Sica，Eric Rohmer，and Jacques Tati. His latest film Five (2003) is subtitled Dedicated to Ozu. Khiarostami has stated that Yasujiro Ozu and Buster Keaton are his favorite filmmakers.

Kiarostami is also a noted photographer and poet. A bilingual collection of more than 200 of his poems，Walking with the Wind，was recently published by Harvard University Press.