TEHRAN – Celebrated Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami was honored posthumously with the Jean Renoir Award for International Screenwriting Achievement at the 2017 Writers Guild of America Awards on Sunday. 

His son, Ahmad Kiarostami, accepted the award from actress Shohreh Aghdashloo on his behalf, WGA West announced.

Kiarostami, whose 1997 film “Taste of Cherry” won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, died last July.

“Abbas Kiarostami was, as Martin Scorsese put it, ‘one of those rare artists with a special knowledge of the world,’” WGA West President Howard A. Rodman told the Variety earlier in January when the WGA West announced its plan to honor the filmmaker with this award.

“As a founding father of the New Iranian Cinema, Kiarostami navigated tricky political and cultural terrains with courage and grace. Yet the impact of his work – and his life – is felt far outside the borders of his native land. Kiarostami’s films were fiction, were documentary, were transcendent. He expanded cinematic narrative for all of us, even as he raised the rhythms of ordinary life to the level of high art.”

The winners of the 2017 Writers Guild Awards for outstanding achievement in writing for film, television, new media, videogames, news, radio, promotional and graphic animation categories were announced at concurrent ceremonies at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles and the Edison Ballroom in New York City.

Photo: Ahmad Kiarostami, the son of auteur Abbas Kiarostami, accepts the Jean Renoir Award for International Screenwriting Achievement during the Writers Guild of America Awards on behalf his father on February 19, 2017.

MMS/YAW