Based on a short story by Gholam-hossein Saedi, The Cow told the story of a villager and his unique anthropomorphic relationship with his animal with astonishing visual and narrative panache. Although there were many crucial developments in cinema in the 1970s, the world’s attention was captured by the Revolution of 1977-1979. What brought the focus back to cinema was Amir Naderi’s masterwork, The Runner (1984), which was something of a revelation when it premiered at the Festival of the Three Continents in Nantes.
Shot in multiple locations in the south of the country during the War (1980-1988), The Runner crafted a cinematic landscape of its own, following the solitary life of a young boy mesmerised by running, to which Naderi gave a deeply moving, allegorical significance. It was immediately after the global success of The Runner that the world took notice of Abbas Kiarostami, when his now classic film Where is the Friend’s Home? (1985) premiered at the Locarno Film Festival.
