TEHRAN – Iranian film expert Mohammad Atebbai said on Tuesday Abbas Kiarostami’s “24 Frames” was a good ending for the career of the world-renowned filmmaker.

He made the remarks in an interview with the Persian service of ISNA after watching the film in the 70th Anniversary Events at the Cannes Film Festival.

“It is a masterful and innovative film that shows his great expertise in cinema,” he stated.

“24 Frames” was completed months before Kiarostami’s death in July 2016. 

“It began with musings on epochal paintings and evolved with the photographs I had taken over the years,” Kiarostami once said about his film.

“Each of these frames is in essence 4 minutes and 30 seconds of what I imagine to have transpired before and after a single image,” he added.

Atebbai said, “I suppose that his way of filmmaking in this movie had whatever I want to see from cinema; cinema that you know is so real and at the same time is surreal.”

“The stories have been arranged masterfully and the idea to narrate the stories through the pictures was very attractive,” he added.

He said that the film got a great reception from most of the people who watched it at Cannes, where Kiarostami won the Palme d’Or for “Taste of Cherry” in 1997.

Eighteen films are competing for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, which will be underway in the French town until May 28.

Photo: A poster for Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s final film “24 Frames”

MMS/YAW