AP picks Kiarostami’s work among Best 10 Films of the Decade

The Associated Press has picked Iranian late-great director Abbas Kiarostami’s ‘Certified Copy’ one of the Best 10 Films of the Decade.

The Iranian director’s title has gained the 8th spot in the AP’s list.

‘Certified Copy’ is about a discussion on the essence of authenticity in art and what, exactly, constitutes a reproduction.

“Can a fiction be truth? That’s the heady question behind the great Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy,” in which an antiques dealer (Juliette Binoche) and a writer (William Shimell) debate the essence of authenticity in art and what, exactly, constitutes a reproduction (perhaps everything). The film has its own metamorphosis of sorts too as the nature of even their relationship becomes amorphous and obscured when a farce about the two being married ends up becoming very real. It was an audacious and provocative film to kick off a decade of cinema and while the answers remain elusive, the experience and ideas are those that nine-plus years on have continued to provoke,” the AP wrote about the movie.

The full list is as follows:

1. ‘Tree of Life’ by Terrence Malick

2. ‘Phantom Thread’ by Paul Thomas Anderson

3. ‘Margaret’ by Kenneth Lonergan

4. ‘Lady Bird’ by Greta Gerwig

5. ‘Moonlight’ by Barry Jenkins

6. ‘Somewhere’ by Sofia Coppola

7. ‘Cold War’ by Pawel Pawlikowski

8. ‘Certified Copy’ by Abbas Kiarostami

9. ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

10. ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’ by Wes Anderson

The AP has also mentioned ‘Dawson City Frozen Time’, ‘Melancholia’, ‘The Florida Project’, ‘The Social Network’, ‘Timbuktu’, ‘Cameraperson’, ‘The Immigrant’, ‘A Separation’ (by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi), ‘I Am Love’, ‘Burning’, ‘Senna’, ‘Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood’, ‘Phoenix’, ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’, ‘Faces Places’, ‘At Berkeley’, and ‘The Deep Blue Sea’.

Kiarostami has won many awards, including the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for ‘Taste of Cherry’.

He is mostly known as a screenwriter, film editor, art director and producer as well as a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, and graphic designer.

The veteran Iranian filmmaker who passed away on July 4, 2016, following a heart attack at the age of 76, was honored at more than 300 film events around the world.

MG/AG