Taste of Cherry is a 1997 Iranian drama film directed by Abbas Kiarostami. The film follows Mr. Badii, a middle-aged man, who is driving around Tehran searching for someone to bury him after he kills himself. He is not terminally ill, but he has lost his will to live and wants to end his own life.
Badii asks several strangers to help him, and each time he fails to convince them. He first asks a soldier, a seminarian, and a Kurdish taxidermist, but they all decline his offer. He then meets a young Afghani worker who wants to return home but has no money, and offers him a large sum of money to bury him in case he dies during the night.
As the night wears on, Badii drives around the countryside looking for a suitable place to die. He goes to a nearby hill and digs his own grave, but before he can kill himself, he is interrupted by a passing army jeep. The soldiers insist on searching his car and surprise him with questions about his identity. In the end, Badii decides not to kill himself and returns home before dawn.
The film ends with a long and silent take of a tree growing beside the road which Badii had driven on. The final scene is symbolic: the tree is a sign of life, while the road is a sign of emptiness and mortality. Taste of Cherry is a somber and philosophical film that explores the themes of life and death, hope and despair, and human connectivity.
