A young boy realizes he's accidentally taken his classmate's notebook home - the same classmate who's already been threatened with expulsion over one more missing assignment - and sets off through winding village paths to return it before it's too late. Abbas Kiarostami builds an entire moral universe out of something this small in Where Is the Friend's House?, the film that opens our five weeks of Kiarostami. It's the first entry in what became known as the Koker Trilogy, all three of which we're screening this month, and the clearest distillation of his whole method: real places, non-professional actors, and enormous emotional stakes drawn from the most ordinary situations imaginable. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it a simple story told with extraordinary emotional precision, while the Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus described it as a gentle, humanist masterpiece that reveals moral depth through simplicity. Five Weeks of Abbas Kiarostami: Where Is the Friend's House? (1987) Thursday, October 1 | Doors: 6PM | Film: 8PM | TicTic, Phnom Penh Free Entry & Popcorn - Arrive early for sofa, bed, or beanbag seating.
