Azar Shiva is an actress, known for King of the Hearts (1968), Aras Khan (1963) and Forgiveness (1962). Art films have garnered international fame and now enjoy a global following. There has been lauded as one of the best exporters of cinema in the 1990s. Some critics now rank as the world’s most important national cinema, artistically, with a significance that invites comparison to neorealism and similar movements in past decades. A range of international film festivals have honored cinema in the last twenty years. World-renowned filmmakers along with many film critics from around the world, have praised cinema as one of the world’s most important artistic cinemas.
By this time Kiarostami was a known and fairly successful film-maker, but his reception in Europe suddenly placed him next to Vittorio De Sica of Bicycle Thieves (1948), Yasujirō Ozu of Tokyo Story (1953) and Satyajit Ray of The Apu Trilogy (1955-1959) and gave his work global power and significance. The following decade, Jafar Panahi won international critical acclaim when his film The Circle (1999) premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
