Earlier he directed ‘Certified Copy’ (Copie Conforme) co-produced by Italy and France in Tuscany, Italy. The film was among the 16 features participated at the Competition Section of the 63rd Cannes Film Festival in 2010.
'The End' is also co-produced by Kiarostami's long-time backer French MK2 and Japanese Eurospace, which has handled the director’s films in Japan for over a decade. The new feature of the director has been scheduled to shoot for eight weeks in Tokyo and the nearby city of Yokohama.
MK2 plans to introduce the film for the 65th Cannes Film Festival which will be held from 16 to 27 May 2012. It hopes so much that it will be accepted at the competition section of the festival.
Kiarostami won the coveted Palm d'Or of Cannes Film Festival for his ‘Taste of Cherry’ in 1997 tied with Shohei Imamura's ‘The Eel’.
The entire staff of ‘The End’ is Japanese not including Iranian Shohreh Golparian who is working with Kiarostami as the interpreter and advisor. According to Screen Daily, the Japanese cast features television star Rin Takanashi as a beautiful, young student called Akiko and veteran actor Tadashi Okuno as a retired professor.
They bring an unusual relationship to the screen, as the young student is involved in an indecent job on the side to pay for her studies, and the brilliant, elderly academic is one her clients.
In recent years, Golparian has cooperated with Japanese film companies and festivals as an advisor of Iranian cinema. She was the executive producer of 'Cut' written and directed by the other Iranian Film director Amir Naderi who has lived and worked in New York for more than two decades.
Co-written by Shinji Aoyama and Yuichi Tazawa, 'Cut' features Japanese stars Hidetoshi Nishijima Takashi Sasano and Takako Tokiwa.
In 'The End' Kiarostami directs his cast with a special method, although he doesn't speak Japanese and is assisted by the interpreter. He tries to follow the method adopted in his earlier works.
The notable point regarding Kiarostami's filmmaking outside the country is that such practice is at odds with what he told in an interview with Guardian in 2005, as he stated that his permanent base in Iran and his national identity have consolidated his ability as a filmmaker.
"When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground, and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit. And if it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. This is a rule of nature. I think if I had left my country, I would be the same as the tree," he said.
After the editing stage, 'The End' will soon be introduced to Cannes Film Festival. The film is scheduled to be screened in 2012.
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