" Contemplative Absence: Sacred Experience in Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us and the Aesthetics of Slow Cinema"
Journal of Religion & Film April 1, 2026 Hessam Abedini
Abbas Kiarostami's film The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) creates sacred experience through systematic absence rather than explicit religious content. Formal techniques such as strategic concealment and extended duration generate contemplative states without religious references. The film adapts Persian poetic traditions of veiling (pardeh) and the interplay between hidden (bāṭin) and manifest (ẓāhir) to create meaning through what remains unseen: a dying woman who never appears, acousmatic voices of invisible characters, and village spaces kept off-screen. Comparative analysis with other slow cinema practitioners reveals how Kiarostami's life-affirming approach, integration of Persian poetry, and ethical engagement with observation distinguish his method. The article contributes to post-secular frameworks for understanding cinematic spirituality through embodied spectatorship and participatory meaning-making.