A school scene. Class has ended. Students walk down the stairs in an orderly fashion. Good. Now rewind. Class has ended. Students walk down the stairs in a disorderly fashion.
The students make their way to a central court for their classroom break. A single water dispenser is at the center. Some students gather to drink. In orderly fashion it takes them a minute and ten seconds to satisfy their thirst. Rewind. In disorderly fashion it takes them three minutes and the dispenser is trashed in the confusion.
The dualist approach is now applied to pedestrians crossing a street. Orderly requires waiting for the green light. Disorderly means dodging cars and forcing cars to brake.
Next, cars approach a narrow tunnel. They bunch up at the entrance in disorderly fashion. If simple rules of orderly merging are obeyed by drivers, the cars line up quickly to enter the tunnel.
A major street intersection. Every car is trying to cross the intersection at the same time in all directions. Fender benders are avoided by centimeters. Turbulent flow is inefficient. Now Kiarostami tries to set the orderly version. A policeman is called in to put some order. But can he succeed in a city where cars are handled by disorderly drivers? A pedestrian just entered the frame disorderly running across the moving traffic. —IMDb Review
Abbas Kiarostami was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1940. He graduated from university with a degree in fine arts before starting work as a graphic designer. He then joined the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, where he started a film section, and this started his career as a filmmaker at the age of 30. Since then he has made many movies and has become one of the most important figures in contemporary Iranian film. He is also a major figure in the arts world, and has had numerous gallery exhibitions of his photography, short films and poetry. He is an iconic figure for what he has done, and he has achieved it all by believing in the arts and the creativity of his mind. —World Cinema Foundation