‘Taste of Cherry’ 4K restoration announced

Late acclaimed filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami's 'Taste of Cherry' has been restored to Blu-ray.

The superlative Blu-ray upgrade from the Criterion Collection has given new life to Abbas Kiarostami’s understated rumination on existential quandaries.

Criterion’s 4K restoration of ‘Taste of Cherry’ includes a handful of welcome supplements, including the 1997 on-camera interview with Abbas Kiarostami that was the sole extra of note on the DVD.

In it, the filmmaker discusses preferring films that lull you to sleep over ones that nail you to your seat, extols the importance of the imagination in cinema and life, briefly comments (breaking into English for the moment) on Quentin Tarantino as cinephile and filmmaker, and admits extracting his life philosophy from his frequent work with children.

The Criterion Collection is a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films on home video.

According to a piece published by UK daily The Guardian, among the 10 best films in the history of Festival de Cannes, 'Taste of Cherry' gained the second place followed by Carol Reed's 'The Third Man'.

The Guardian also dubbed the film a "masterpiece" as well as a work by "cinema's great poet, Abbas Kiarostami."

A brief synopsis of the film reads, "A dispirited man who wants to take his life lies in a grave. There is someone trying to talk him out, reminding him of the taste and joys of this life just like the taste of cherry."

The flick won Iranian cinema the first and only Palme d'Or of 1997 Festival de Cannes.

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