Sightlines · reception

How Still Life was received

1974 · Sohrab Shahid-Saless · Still Life on Sightlines

The arc

It won the Silver Bear and the FIPRESCI Prize at Berlin in 1974, then spent decades nearly impossible to see after Shahid-Saless went into exile; retrospectives and restorations have since recrowned it as a foundational text of slow cinema and the Iranian New Wave.

What’s debated

The eternal slow-cinema litmus test: is watching an old woman thread a needle in real time transcendent or is it just watching an old woman thread a needle?

Its footprint

The needle-threading long take is its calling card — one of the most cited shots in all of slow cinema, name-checked whenever anyone traces the lineage from Iran to Tarr, Akerman comparisons, and beyond.

Where it stands

A cinephile deep cut turned canon climber — the 'proto-Kiarostami' masterpiece that slow-cinema devotees press on each other as the best Iranian film you haven't seen.

Did you know? Shahid-Saless shot the film in just 11 days with a largely non-professional cast, and it went on to beat far bigger productions to the Silver Bear at the 1974 Berlinale.

Named by the director

• Anton Chekhov — Shahid-Saless called Chekhov his favorite writer and the model for his style, quoting him: people don't fall off icebergs — they go to offices, quarrel with their wives and eat cabbage soup.