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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987)

Rating: 4 Stars (out of 4)

Home Work

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Where Is the Friend's Home? on VHS.

I highly recommend all of Abbas Kiarostami's films, but to start with I'd suggest Where Is the Friendąs Home? (1987), the simplest and most moving of his films. In it, a young boy needs simply to return his cousin's composition book to him but doesn't know exactly where the cousin lives. In this film, as with his others, the journey itself, the time it takes, and the place we're in become more important than the actual destination. Seeing a Kiarostami film is as refreshing and exciting as discovering an Orson Welles or a Jean Renoir film for the first time. He's that good.

Note: The above was written for my 2000 San Francisco International Film Festival preview. Kiarostami was honored that year with the festival's lifetime achievement in directing award. The film's title has been listed under several different variations, including: Where Is My Friend's Home and Where Is My Friend's House?.

DVD Details: This great film has not yet been released on DVD in the United States.

Starring: Babek Ahmed Poor, Ahmed Ahmed Poor, Kheda Barech Defai, Iran Outari, Ait Ansari
Written by: Abbas Kiarostami
Directed by: Abbas Kiarostami
MPAA Rating: NR
Language: Farsi with English subtitles
Running Time: 85 minutes
Date: April 16, 2000