"Anywhere I went with Mr. Kiarostami, I paid attention and realise that he is always sitting in a way that he's facing nature...." - Jafar Panahi 

'Five Dedicated to Ozu' cannot fail to add to Abbas Kiarostami's reputation as one of the most consistently innovative and visually talented filmmakers in the world. This is a richly poetic, radically minimalist film, featuring five extended sequences: a piece of driftwood is tossed and broken by the waves; people stroll along the promenade; a group of dogs gather at the water's edge; ducks move noisily across the frame from one side to the other; and a pool of water is shot at night, with the sounds of a storm and frogs croaking breaking the stillness.

The sequences are considerably more than pretty pictures or documentary record carefully constructed and manipulated, with a soundtrack meticulously assembled as a symphony of natural noise, together they comprise an abstract narrative arc, which moves evocatively from solitude to community, motion to rest, and near silence to sound and song.

Ending on a note of rebirth and regeneration, FIVE's; choreographed action and inaction encourages and enables the viewer to engage with the film in an unusually active way. A sublimely beautiful response to the natural world, the film is profoundly contemplative and serene, giving audiences the opportunity to embrace a different and unusual but richly rewarding cinematic experience.

"The beauty of Five Dedicated to Ozu ultimately lies less in any grand philosophical or personal statements, and more in the way Kiarostami uses daringly distended long takes to attune us to a different kind of drama—the drama of everyday life, the kind of drama that only the cinema could make truly dramatic. In that sense, the film may not conform to Ozu in style, but it certainly aligns with Ozu in spirit."  - Kenji Fujishima

FIVE Dedicated to Ozu Dir: Abbas Kiarostami | Iran | 2003 | 74 min | Cert U

The Making of FIVE Dir: Abbas Kiarostami | Iran | 2005 | 52 min | Cert U

Five and The Making of Five will be introduced by Thomas Lobban, a Bristol-based artist and writer whose own work has drawn from Kiarostami's lessons.