Where Is The Friend's House? - Wikipedia

1987 film by Abbas Kiarostami Not to be confused with Where Is My Friend's Home.

Where Is the Friend's House?
Film poster
Directed by	Abbas Kiarostami
Written by	Abbas Kiarostami
Produced by	Ali Reza Zarrin
Starring	Babak Ahmadpour Ahmad Ahmadpour
Cinematography	Farhad Saba
Edited by	Abbas Kiarostami
Release date	February 1987 (1987-02) (Fajr)
Running time	83 minutes
Country	Iran
Language	Persian

Where Is the Friend's House? (Persian: خانه دوست کجاست, romanized: Khāne-ye dust kojāst), also known as Where Is the Friend's Home?, is a 1987 Iranian drama film written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami. The plot depicts a conscientious schoolboy's attempt to return his friend's school notebook to his home in a neighboring village, to prevent the friend from being expelled if he fails to hand it in the next day. The film, whose title derives from a poem by Sohrab Sepehri, is the first installment in Kiarostami's Koker trilogy, followed by And Life Goes On and Through the Olive Trees, all of which take place in Koker, Iran.

Plot

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Ahmad, a grade schooler from the village of Koker, watches as his teacher berates a fellow student, Mohammad Reza, for repeatedly failing to complete the homework in his notebook, threatening expulsion on the next offense. When Ahmad returns home, he realizes he has accidentally taken Reza's notebook. Against his mother's orders, he sets out in search for Reza's house in the neighbouring Poshteh, encountering false leads, dead ends, and distractions as he attempts to enlist adults in his search, most of whom ignore him or cannot answer his questions. When night falls, unable to find Reza's house, Ahmad returns home and does both his and Reza's homework in the notebooks. The next day, Ahmad arrives at class just in time, and the homework is deemed excellent by the teacher.

Cast

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• Babak Ahmadpour as Ahmad Ahmadpour
• Ahmed Ahmadpour as Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh
• Khodabaksh Defai as the Teacher
• Iran Outari as Mother
• Ayat Ansari as Father
• Sedigheh Tohidi as the Persian Neighbour
• Payman Moafi as Ali, a neighbour
• Teba Soleimani as the Husband
• Aziz Babai as the Waiter
• Nader Gholami as the Property Owner
• Ali Jamali as Grandfather's Friend
• Akbar Moradi as the Old Man from Azerbaijan
• Mohammad Reza Parvaneh as the Man Mistaken for Ali
• Farahanka Brothers as the Young Boy
• Maria Chdjari as the Girl who Stutters
• Hamdollah Askarpour as the Old Man
• Kadiret Kaoiyenpour as the Religious Old Man
• Hajar Farazpour as the Apple Seller
• Mohammad Hossein Rouhi as the Carpenter
• Rafia Difai as Grandfather
• Agakhan Karadach Khani as the Street Vendor

Commendations

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Where Is the Friend's House? was Kiarostami's first film to gain major international attention.[1] It won the Bronze Leopard at the 1989 Locarno Film Festival,[2] and the Golden Plate at the Fajr Film Festival. The film is on the British Film Institute's list of 50 films to see by age 15.[3]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 11 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.9/10.[4]

Legacy

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Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi said that "I always have this film in mind because of the director's profound perspective on filmmaking and its strange and distinct structure".[2]

The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited Where Is the Friend's House? as one of his favorite films.[5]

Jonathan Rosenbaum in 1998 called Kiarostami the greatest living filmmaker and called the film (along with Through the Olive Trees and And Life Goes On) "sustained meditations on singular landscapes and the way ordinary people live in them; obsessional quests that take on the contours of parables; concentrated inquiries that raise more questions than they answer; and comic as well as cosmic poems about dealing with personal and impersonal disaster. They're about making discoveries and cherishing what's in the world—including things that we can't understand".[6]

In 2016, shortly after Kiarostami's death, Werner Herzog called him "one of the all-time most wonderful filmmakers" and cited the film as one of his best.[7]

References

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1. ^ "Where is My Friend's House? (1987)". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved March 1, 2015.
2. ^ a b "Where is the Friend's House?". Toronto International Film Festival. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
3. ^ "50 films to see by age 15". IMDb. 6 May 2020. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
4. ^ "Where Is the Friend's House?". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved September 8, 2024.
5. ^ "Akira Kurosawa's Top 100 Movies!". Archived from the original on 27 March 2010.
6. ^ Rosenbaum, Jonathan. "Where Is My Friend's House?". Chicago Reader. Archived from the original on April 4, 2020. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
7. ^ Werner-Herzog (2016-07-12). "I am Werner Herzog, the filmmaker. AMA". r/IAmA. Retrieved 2023-10-29.

External links

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• Where Is the Friend's House? at IMDb
• Where Is the Friend's House? at Rotten Tomatoes

v t e Abbas Kiarostami
Cinematic style Filmography Awards
Films directed	Feature The Experience (1973) The Traveler (1974) A Wedding Suit (1976) The Report (1977) First Case, Second Case (1979) Fellow Citizen (1983) First Graders (1984) Where Is the Friend's House? (1987) Homework (1989) Close-Up (1990) And Life Goes On (1992) Through the Olive Trees (1994) Taste of Cherry (1997) The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) ABC Africa (2001) Ten (2002) Five (2003) 10 on Ten (2004) Shirin (2008) Certified Copy (2010) Like Someone in Love (2012) 24 Frames (2017) Short The Bread and Alley So Can I Two Solutions for One Problem Colors Tribute to the Teachers Toothache Orderly or Disorderly The Chorus Roads of Kiarostami Segment "Dinner for One" in Lumière and Company Middle section in Tickets "Where Is My Romeo?" in To Each His Own Cinema
Screenplays	Final Exam The Key Crimson Gold The Journey The White Balloon Willow and Wind
Related topics	Koker trilogy
Books	Lessons with Kiarostami
Category