Through the Olive Trees

A film crew arrives in a village in northern Iran, in the Koker region, to shoot a scene for a production. The director needs a replacement when the young man cast opposite the female lead drops out, and he turns to Hossein, a local mason who has been working as a general helper on the shoot. The choice creates complications: the actress, Tahereh, is a girl from the neighbourhood, and Hossein is in love with her, though she has not returned his feelings and her family disapproves of him because he has no house or money. On set and off it, the line between the fiction being filmed and the lives of the people performing in it becomes difficult to keep.

The film is the third part of Abbas Kiarostami's Koker trilogy, following Where Is the Friend's Home? and Life, and Nothing More…, and it was released in 1994. Kiarostami directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Hengameh Panahi and Harold Manning, and produced it with Alain Depardieu. It was his thirteenth feature in a career of twenty-two directing credits, arriving between Life, and Nothing More… and Taste of Cherry. The cast mixes professional and non-professional performers, among them Mohammadali Keshavarz as the film director and Hossein Rezai and Tahereh Ladanian as the young couple. On IMDb it holds a score of 7.7 from around 12,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.4 from 217; a critics' rating stands at 7.5 from 16 reviews, close to the audience verdict.