Where Is The Friend's House?
About Where Is The Friend's House?
An eight-year-old in Koker takes his classmate’s notebook home by mistake. The teacher has said the boy will be expelled if it is not handed in the next day. He walks to the neighboring village to find the friend’s house. Adults send him the wrong way. He does not find it. He goes home, does the homework, and in the morning puts a flower in the notebook. The title is a line from Sohrab Sepehri. Babak and Ahmad Ahmadpour play the two boys.
Cast & crew
More about Where Is The Friend's House?
Abbas Kiarostami wrote, directed, and edited it. Farhad Saba photographed. A release date on record is 1 February 1987. It runs 83 minutes. Persian title: خانه دوست کجاست. It is the first of the Koker trilogy, before And Life Goes On and Through the Olive Trees. Another date on file is 7 January 1993.
Themes
Making
Kiarostami shoots the walk as the film. The boy asks, is redirected, and still has the notebook at night. The flower is what he can put in it when the house is not found.
Look
Farhad Saba follows the boy on the paths between Koker and the next village, in long walks rather than a cut to the friend’s door.
Preservation
An 83-minute print circulates.
Notes
- The notebook, not a lost child, is what he is trying to return.
- Koker is the village. The later two films return to the same place after the 1990 earthquake.
- Sepehri’s poem supplies the title, not a subplot.
- A Commons file uses an Arabic rendering of the title.
Scenes
- He realizes the friend’s notebook is in his bag.
- The walk to the next village ends without the house.
- In the morning a flower is inside the notebook.
Influenced by
- Sohrab Sepehri (poem)
Influenced
- And Life Goes On (1992)
- Through the Olive Trees (1994)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (أين منزل صديقي؟ - فيلم إيراني مترجم - Where is the Friend's Home.webm)
