close-up of a woman with her head turned and a man just behind heralr

Certified Copy
(Copie conforme)

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami.
With Juliette Binoche, William Shimell, Adrian Moore.
France/Italy/Belgium/Iran, 2010, 35mm, color, 106 min.
French, English and Italian with English subtitles.

Kiarostami’s first cinematic venture outside of Iran bears all the hallmarks of independent European cinema–even the omnipresent Juliette Binoche. However, this is Kiarostami; he will manipulate and transcend such expectations. In a slightly more stylized and theatrical mode, the director focuses on Binoche’s French antiques dealer and her exchanges with a British author—played by opera star William Shimell—of a book about the question of copies versus originals. As the two wander around a village in Tuscany, their unstable, fluctuating roles—in the relationship and in the film—begin to resemble so many reflections within what appears to be a rather fluid, multiplying reality. Yet, as the writer’s book argues, these reflections—or copies—are not necessarily less meaningful than the original. And those sitting in the theater should know. More than any of Kiarostami’s films, Certified Copy makes viewers profoundly aware of all the personal, cultural and intellectual baggage audiences carry into the theater—and everywhere else.

Part of film series

Read more

Abbas Kiarostami, A Cinema of Participation

Other film series with this film

Read more

Late Kiarostami

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada

Read more
a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf

Read more
a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil

Read more
Peter Sellers wearing a large hat with "ME" embroidered on it, and gripping a Pilgrim-like collar

Carol for Another Christmas