Kiarostami’s films play an intriguing game between reality and fiction. A game that is now even more intriguing and penetrating since is inextricable linked with two of his previous films, Where is my Friend’s House? (1988) and And Life Goes On (1992). In , a man explains to the camera that he has come to Koker to make a film entitled ‘And Life Goes On’. He is seeking a youth to play the lead. The protagonist of this film-in-a-film is a director who expresses his surprise about a young man who married five days after the families of himself and his bride had died in an earthquake. The director therefore decides to allow Hossein, a young bricklayer, to take over the rôle. This confuses Hossein, because the woman with whom he has to perform in the film is in reality the woman he wants to marry. Kiarostami’s masterful directing excels in accuracy and simplicity and manages to transport the viewer to a different place in the world, and hence to a completely different world.
