Taste of Cherry - The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray)

The first Iranian film to win the Palme d’Or, this austere, emotionally complex drama by the great Abbas Kiarostami follows the enigmatic Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) as he drives around the hilly outskirts of Tehran looking for someone who will agree to bury him after he commits suicide, a taboo under Islam. Extended conversations with three passengers (a soldier, a seminarian, and a taxidermist) elicit different views on mortality and individual choice. Operating at once as a closely observed, realistic story and a fable populated by archetypal figures, Taste of Cherry challenges the viewer to consider what often goes unexamined in everyday life.

• Iran
• 99 minutes
• Color
• 1.66:1
• Persian
• Spine #45
• 1997

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Project (1997), a thirty-nine-minute sketch film for Taste of Cherry that Abbas Kiarostami made with his son Bahman Kiarostami
- New interview with film scholar Hamid Naficy
- Interview from 1997 with Abbas Kiarostami, conducted by film scholar Jamsheed Akrami
- Program from 2017 on Kiarostami’s use of landscape featuring film scholar Kristin Thompson
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic A. S. Hamrah

*New cover by Michael Boland