Trouble arises on the set of Abbas Kiarostami’s And Life Goes On when the romantic misfortune of one of the actors—a young man who pines for the woman cast as his wife, even though, in real life, she will have nothing to do with him—leaves the director caught in the middle.

In this metafictional masterpiece, Kiarostami contemplates cinema and its romantic fallacies. Grounded in Northern Iran’s folk traditions and with a soft focus on its shaken yet convalescent landscape, this warmhearted tale explores what happens when an unrequited love on a film set causes a stir.