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And Life Goes On

Original title: Zendegi va digar hich
  • 1992
  • Not Rated
  • 1h 35m
IMDb RATING
7.9/10
8.4K
YOUR RATING
And Life Goes On (1992)
DocudramaQuestRoad TripAdventureDrama

A director and his son return to a region damaged by the Guilan earthquake, hoping to find the children who appeared in his film a few years earlier.A director and his son return to a region damaged by the Guilan earthquake, hoping to find the children who appeared in his film a few years earlier.A director and his son return to a region damaged by the Guilan earthquake, hoping to find the children who appeared in his film a few years earlier.

  • Director
    • Abbas Kiarostami
  • Writer
    • Abbas Kiarostami
  • Stars
    • Farhad Kheradmand
    • Pouya Payvar
    • Behrouz Abedini
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.9/10
    8.4K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Abbas Kiarostami
    • Writer
      • Abbas Kiarostami
    • Stars
      • Farhad Kheradmand
      • Pouya Payvar
      • Behrouz Abedini
    • 25User reviews
    • 17Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 win & 2 nominations total

    Photos47

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    Top cast27

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    Farhad Kheradmand
    • Film Director
    Pouya Payvar
    • Puya
    Behrouz Abedini
    Shahin Abzan
    Ahmed Ahmedpoor
    Babek Ahmedpoor
    Babek Ahmedpoor
    Ziba Babayi
    Banafsheh Behboudi
    Youssef Branki
    Farangis Darabi
    Maha Bano Darabi
    Komeil Feizi
    Ferkhondeh Feyzi
    Moharam Feyzi
    Mohammad Hassanpour
    Farhad Kazemi
    Hosein Khadem
    Shahrbanoo Nikkhah
    • Director
      • Abbas Kiarostami
    • Writer
      • Abbas Kiarostami
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews25

    7.98.4K
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    Featured reviews

    10Red-125

    Brilliant film by a master director

    Zendegi va digar hich (1992) is an Iranian movie shown in the U.S. with the translated title "And Life Goes On." The film was written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami.

    The movie is part of a series of films entitled "The Koker Trilogy." Koker is a small village northwest of Tehran. No one outside Iran would know anything about Koker, except for Kiarostami's films. He used Koker as the setting for the first film in the trilogy--Where is the Friend's House? (1987) (I loved this movie. It has an amazing IMDb rating of 8.1.)

    After that movie, people may have vaguely remembered Koker. However, the trilogy has made it famous among Iranians and among cinephiles.

    Koker is famous because of a horrible tragedy that took place on June 21, 1990. A devastating earthquake destroyed Koker and many surrounding villages. The loss of life was immense. Almost all the buildings were destroyed.

    In real life, director Kiarostami and his son traveled to Koker five days after the earthquake occurred. They wanted to find out if the two brothers who starred in the earlier film had survived the earthquake.

    Kiarostami turned his trip into this movie. He found that despite the immense grief felt by the local people, life did, indeed, go on.

    Farhad Kheradmand starred as the film director (Kiarostami), and Buba Bayour stared as his son Puya. Neither is a professional actor, but you could never tell that from their performances, which are superb. (Bayour never acted again. Kheradmand appeared again in the third movie of the trilogy--Through the Olive Trees.)

    Basically, this movie is a quest movie. The father and his young son are determined to find the young boys, and the immensity of the tragedy continually puts obstacles in their way.

    Kiarostami is famous for using panoramic long shots, and this is what we see at the end of the film. The closing long shot is one of the most powerful film endings I've ever seen.

    This is an amazing film. It has a very high IMDb rating of 7.9. I rated it 10. It worked well enough on the small screen, but of course it would be better in a theater. We saw it on a Criterion DVD, sold with the other two movies in the the trilogy. The films may be available separately, which would be OK. However, the Criterion edition has many video extras, along with a written essay by noted film critic Godfrey Cheshire.

    This a wonderful movie--I would say it's a must-see if you love great cinema. Find it and watch it.

    IMPORTANT: The trilogy should be seen in order of production: Where is the Friend's House?, then And Life Goes On, then Through the Olive Trees. The movies won't work as well if seen out of their order.
    8rasecz

    A drive through areas devastated by the 1990 earthquake in Iran

    There is a long intro before the title. A film director and his son are shown driving in a small beat-up car to northern Iran soon after the 1990 earthquake. When the car enters a long tunnel, the camera keeps rolling and on the darken screen the titles finally appear.

    The film director is nominally Kiarostami, but played by an actor. Typical for his films, the documentary genre blurs with the fictional account. The devastation that we see from the moving car is real, though the lamentations we witness are probably staged, which does not diminish the sense of suffering of the affected local communities.

    The impetus of this travelogue through a torn landscape is to locate at least one of the kids that was his main character in one of his previous films, "Khaneh-je doost kojast?". That quest is the director's central preoccupation, so much so he does not recognize another boy, who he gives a lift to, that had a secondary role in that film. If you see the aforementioned film, you will clearly remember the face.

    The quest is made difficult by roads that have been gutted or blocked by rock and earth slides, and by the steep mountainous terrain of his goal, the small town of Koker. As he gets tantalizing close, we root for him.

    The way the film ends may be disappointing to some, but I found that it matched the title of the film, "And Life Goes On". For the survivors of the earthquake there is mourning for the dead, but at the same time the 1990 World Soccer Cup is going on. What team will make it to the final? While houses have to be rebuilt, it is also important that TV antennas be lifted so that all can see the games in the evening. The director will make more films but now he is concerned about the well-being of that child actor. So life goes on, the quest must go on. There is no ending.
    10tnrcooper

    Modern Day Neo-Realism

    This movie has the realistic feel of a documentary although I wouldn't call it a faux documentary because there is no pretension that it is a mock-up. It has the feel of a documentary and if you didn't know any better, you could quite reasonably conclude that it was. I would say that it is in the tradition of the Bicycle Thief or other classics of the Neo- Realist genre in which life proceeds at a leisurely pace and multiple quotidian events and regular people ground the plot as realistically as possible.

    In this film, an Iranian director (Farah Kheradmand), representing Kiarostami, travels with his son (Buba Bayour) to small town Koker in the remote mountains of Iran to find a child actor who had been in his most recent movie and about whom he worried in the wake of a strong earthquake. Clearly there is some overlap with real life events as there was a major earthquake in Iran in 1990 and one of the stars of Kiarostami's previous movies ("Where Is The Friend's Home?") lived in this area. The pace of the movie, the everyday transactions, and the humans' doggedness in the face of tragedy indicate Kiarostami's love for people and thoughtfulness as a director.

    Throughout the movie, we see slices of life. We see a young couple getting married even on a day when some of their relatives die, explaining that they thought they should continue, particularly on such a sad day. We see a man lugging heavy belongings to help out his family. We see a young Buba, with the wisdom of an old man, heartbreakingly consoling a woman who has lost one of her daughters. We see a little baby crying and the director quickly consoling the baby. One of these incidents in and of itself would be insignificant, but they are linked together in such numbers that the collective weight of the movie stays with you and cannot be shaken. Together, such a collection of events comprise the guts and the essence of life. The humble dignity of the characters will not be forgotten easily.
    GregSinora

    Fantastic, today's Neo-realism

    Whilst watching this film i was struck by how natural and simplistic the film was. A film director and his son travel through Iran after an earthquake has struck to try and see if the boy who starred in his last film is still alive. That is what the film is, observing people on the road, whose lives have been destroyed, people whose lives still go on. Kiarostami presents life in such a naturalistic way that we are sitting in the back seat of the car taking the journey as well. That is the perfection of the this film, the real life, the carnage of life, the people striving for life, all add up to one up-lifting experience. Like Rossellini with a uplifting finale, and minus the melodrama. Kiarostami seeks to capture reality on film in a similar way as the Neo-realists, through humanity and observation, but while the Neo-realists films can be seen as natural, Kiarostami reinvents naturalism as if nature had shot the film itself. Yet another piece of perfection from Kiarostami, not to be missed.
    8JSL26

    Absorbing and beautiful

    This is the second film in a trilogy. The first one (Where Is My Friend's Home") involved a kid searching for his classmate's house to return a notebook (to save him from the wrath of his teacher). A charming little film.

    This one is a faux documentary that follows the director's attempt to find the two boys after the devastating 1990 earthquake. It is leisurely paced (though I would never say it is "dull") but the earthquake scenes are powerful and beautiful. The director's quest is absorbing and he and his son are a likable duo. Also there are some surprising philosophical and comedic interludes.

    I would recommend this film highly whether or not you have seen the first.

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Trivia
      In 1990, an earthquake devastated the area around the farming village of Koker in Iran, killing 50,000 people, including 20,000 children. Abbas Kiarostami and his 11 year old son Bahman drove to Koker to try to find the two boys who acted in his film "Where is the Friend's House." When he later told an audience in Germany about the journey, someone suggested that he turn the story into a film and he began filming a short while later.
    • Connections
      Featured in Through the Olive Trees (1994)
    • Soundtracks
      Concerto in F Major for Two Horns, RV 539: II. Larghetto
      Written by Antonio Vivaldi

      Performed by Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

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    FAQ14

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • October 21, 1992 (France)
    • Country of origin
      • Iran
    • Official site
      • sourehcinema
    • Language
      • Persian
    • Also known as
      • Life and Nothing More...
    • Filming locations
      • Koker, Gilan Province, Iran
    • Production companies
      • Kanun parvaresh fekri
      • Kanun parvaresh fekri
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 35 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.66 : 1

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