Life, and Nothing More

Plot

A film director and his son start a journey towards Koker, where approximately half of Where is My Friend's House? took place. During the first half, they search for a highway to the village, as most of the roads have been damaged or blocked by a severe earthquake two years prior; meanwhile, the two cross paths with several locals (who were also witnesses of the earthquake) and often ask directions.

After changing his route several times, the two finally reach one of the villages in which the aforementioned movie was filmed. They visit one of those who acted, and accompany him for a little while. The director and his son visit the destroyed village and hear additional stories of those who survived, among them a young married couple that lost many relatives in the disaster but decided to marry anyway (since the dead did not foresee their demise). One scene featuring this couple is a focal point of the third film in Kiarostami's Koker trilogy, Through the Olive Trees.

Later, the director and his son find another child who acted in the movie and take him to the tents, where most Koker inhabitants whose houses have been destroyed stay. The son of the director wants to watch the final match of the Football World Cup with the other kids, so his father leaves him there and comes back later to pick him up. He talks with other witnesses of the earthquake and admires the spirit they have had to move on with their lives.

The film's last shot is several minutes long; the director is struggling to reach the town in his car. He passes a man carrying a tank and drives up a hill until the engine begins overheating and he is unable to continue. The man with the tank helps him restart the engine. The director seemingly leaves as the man with the tank goes walking uphill. The director's car races several meters before trying to climb the hill again and after he makes it, the director picks up the man with the tank. Following this scene, the movie goes black.

Part in the trilogy

Life, and Nothing More... is the second film of the Koker trilogy. The first film, Where Is the Friend's Home?, is a fairly straightforward fiction in which the fourth wall is respected. Following the 1990 Iran earthquake, Kiarostami travelled to the affected area to discover the fates of the child actors who had appeared in Where Is the Friend's Home?. This journey is partly fictionalized in Life, and Nothing More..., which blends fiction with reality. The filming of an episode in this movie is the subject of Through the Olive Trees, which is made in the same style of docufiction as its predecessor in the trilogy.

Each of the films in the Koker trilogy seem to jump to a higher reality where its predecessor is seen as fiction; because of this, the filmmaker himself (Kiarostami) is fictionalized in the second and third film (twice in the latter).