24 Frames

For what would end up being his final film, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami gave himself a challenge: to create a dialogue between his work as a filmmaker and his work as a photographer, bridging the gap between the two art forms to which he dedicated his life. With the goal of reconstructing the moments immediately before and after a photograph is taken, Kiarostami selected twenty-four still images‚ most of which were of stark landscapes inhabited only by foraging birds and other such wildlife‚ and digitally animated each one into its own subtly evolving four-and-a-half-minute vignette, creating a series of poignant studies in movement, perception, and time. A sustained meditation on the process of image-making, 24 Frames is a graceful and elegiac farewell from one of the giants of world cinema.