Kiarostami takes meta-narrative gamesmanship to new heights in the final instalment of his Koker trilogy. Unfolding “behind the scenes” of the previous film, And Life Goes On, Through the Olive Trees traces the complications that arise when the romantic misfortune of one of the actors — a lovelorn young man who pines for the woman cast as his wife even though, in real life, she will have nothing to do with him — creates turmoil on set with the director caught in the middle. A gentle human comedy steeped in Iranian village life, the film peels away layers of artifice as it investigates the elusive relationship between cinema and reality.

Notes by David O’Mahony