Tiger Eyes

‘Film is the image of the soul’, Abbas Kiarostami states. He is one of seven filmmakers who talked to documentary filmmaker Scheffer on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Like Wim Wenders, Raúl Ruiz, Michael Haneke, Jim Jarmush, Abderrahmane Sissako and Apitchatpong Weerasethakul, Kiarostami is representative of the forty-plus festival. Scheffer asks them about their first visual memory. Wenders recalls how he discerned new patterns on the wallpaper in his nursery every day. Sissako tells about a flapping curtain and how the light fell into his room. The often socially critical filmmakers, all filmed up close and in black and white, share their visions on film as an art form and discuss, separately, the state of affairs in the film industry in general. Key scenes from their works underpin their words.