Happy Birthday, Abbas

Abbas Kiarostami ( عباس کیارستمی ) was born today in 1940, in Tehran. A poet and a filmaker, he's one of the few who remained in Iran after the 1979 revolution. As he puts in:

When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground, and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit. And if it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. This is a rule of nature. I think if I had left my country, I would be the same as the tree.

His movies (such as Where is the friend's house?, The olive trees, The wind will carry us, Shirin, and Life and nothing else) are indisputably brilliant, though it's equally indisputable that as many people hate them as love them.