In Iran the World Cup used to trigger joy on our streets. It feels very different now

A growing divide between fans and team, coupled with economic hardship and war, has dampened the mood

Abbas Kiarostami, the late Iranian director, made a film called Life, and Nothing More …, set during the 1990 World Cup in Italy. The film tells the story of a father and son who, during the tournament, travel to an earthquake-stricken village that had served as the location for Kiarostami’s earlier films. The son, eager to watch Argentina play Brazil, finds a villager who, despite having lost several family members, is busy adjusting a television antenna to watch the game between the two South American football giants.

Kiarostami later wrote about this scene: “This sequence is directly drawn from a similar experience during my trip to the earthquake‑stricken region in the early days after the disaster. [The man] had his left arm in a cast, was shirtless, and with his right hand was striking one stone against another at the base of the antenna to secure it. I saw that after that event, what mattered there was life – and then football.”