: A fictionalized account of Kiarostami returning to the region after a devastating earthquake to find the boy from the first film. Through the Olive Trees (1994)
When the original actor struggles, Hossein (Hossein Rezai), a local bricklayer, is hired as the replacement. Complications arise because Hossein is deeply in love with the leading lady, Tahereh (Tahereh Ladanian), a local student. In real life, Hossein had proposed to Tahereh, but her grandmother rejected him because he is poor, illiterate, and lacks a house. The film operates on multiple narrative layers:
Through the Olive Trees solidified Abbas Kiarostami’s reputation as one of the most innovative filmmakers of the late 20th century. The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and received widespread international acclaim.
Abbas Kiarostami’s (1994) is a cornerstone of modern world cinema and the final chapter of his celebrated Koker Trilogy . Set in the aftermath of the devastating 1990 earthquake in Northern Iran, the film is a profound exploration of the intersection between art and life, peeling back layers of fiction to reveal a raw, human reality. A Narrative Within a Narrative Through the olive trees- Abbas Kiarostami
The lush olive trees and winding, steep roads are treated as characters, offering a striking contrast to the emotional, tumultuous scenes of human interaction.
Through the Olive Trees is a deeply humanistic film, touching on several core themes:
On the surface, Through the Olive Trees tells a disarmingly simple story. A film crew has arrived in earthquake‑ravaged Koker to shoot a scene for Life and Nothing More (the film we have already seen). The director (played by Mohamad Ali Keshavarz) is casting local villagers as actors, and among them are two people with a history. : A fictionalized account of Kiarostami returning to
The film's origin is as remarkable as its structure. Kiarostami's Koker Trilogy was born from a real-life tragedy, the 1990 Manjil-Rudbar earthquake that killed over 50,000 people, including 10,000 children. The first film, Where Is the Friend's House? (1987), was a simple tale of childhood. The second, And Life Goes On (1992), was a docu-drama following a director searching for the young boys from the first film in the earthquake's aftermath. During the chaotic production of the second film, Kiarostami cast two local non-professionals, Hossein Rezai and Tahereh Ladania, in a small scene as newlyweds.
A semi-fictionalized documentary road movie. A director travels to Koker after the 1990 earthquake to find out if the two young actors from the first film survived.
: A "behind-the-scenes" look at the production of And Life Goes On , specifically expanding a brief four-minute scene involving a young couple. Plot and Thematic Core: Love Amidst the Rubble In real life, Hossein had proposed to Tahereh,
The film operates as a Russian nesting doll of reality: it is a fictional story about the making of a real film ( And Life Goes On ), which itself was about a real disaster (the 1990 Iranian earthquake). In this layer, we follow Hossein, a poor, illiterate bricklayer who is cast as an actor. He plays a man who is marrying a woman named Tahereh. In reality, Tahereh is played by an actress who barely acknowledges Hossein’s existence. He is in love with her; she is distant, perhaps bound by tradition, perhaps simply uninterested.
The film’s plot is elegantly simple on the surface, yet dizzying in its implications. A film crew, led by a director (played by professional actor Mohamad Ali Keshavarz), arrives in the earthquake-devastated town to shoot a scene for And Life Goes On . The scene involves a young, newly married couple moving into a damaged house. The husband is Hossein (Hossein Rezai playing himself), a stonemason who has lost everything in the quake. The wife is Tahereh (Tahereh Ladania), a shy, educated young woman from a more respectable family.
Set in the earthquake-devastated region of northern Iran, Through the Olive Trees offers a deceptive simplicity. What begins as a straightforward story about a film crew making a movie evolves into a deeply moving, philosophically rich meditation on human resilience and the magic of the moving image. The Plot: A Film Within a Film
However, a real-life drama was unfolding off-camera. Hossein, the illiterate bricklayer, became genuinely infatuated with Tahereh, the educated student. He tried to woo her, but she, from a higher social class, rejected him. The director was deeply moved, not by the fictional story he was filming, but by the unrequited love story happening in front of him. Through the Olive Trees is Kiarostami's unique response, a film that takes this peripheral drama and places it at the very center of its narrative. Mark Cousins, the filmmaker and critic, described this as moving from tragedy to "finding rapture and the life force," a lovely and profound reversal of expectations.