ABC Africa

Documentary

Abbas Kiarostami	Himself
Seyfolah Samadian	Himself

Director	Abbas Kiarostami
Producer	Marin Karmitz; Abbas Kiarostami

Over the course of a ten-day visit to Uganda, uses his camera to capture and caress the faces of a thousand orphans.

Although a documentary about the ravages of AIDS and civil war in Uganda may seem at first like a radical departure, one of the most remarkable things about ABC Africa is the way that Iran's most celebrated auteur makes such unlikely material very much his own. In true Kiarostami style, an impressionistic, deceptively simple record of a journey becomes the film itself. This striking visual poem is full of echoes from his oeuvre: the hypnotic tracking shots from car windows, the dirt-road villages, the majestic landscapes and, above all, the emphasis on the resilience and resourcefulness of children.

Alternately heartbreaking and optimistic, ABC Africa records a people struggling to survive. Filled with laughter and music, and pulsing with life, Kiarostami's vision attests to Africa's sunny spirit in the face of so much adversity.