NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Criterion Blu-ray (July 2019): Criterion have transferred Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees to Blu-ray as part of their 3-disc Koker Trilogy Blu-ray set that also includes Where Is My Friend's House? and And Life Goes On. It is advertised as a "New 2K digital restoration". It looks excellent, not showing the damage in Where Is My Friend's Home?. The image does get inordinately thick and saturated around the 24-minute mark but it is only for a scene. Otherwise this is a solid image showing rich colors (faint green bias in spots) and occasional depth. It's on a dual-layered disc with a max'ed out bitrate and look film-like in-motion.

On their Blu-ray, Criterion use a linear PCM mono track (24-bit) in the original Farsi language. It is flat but dialogue is clear and consistent. The less-noticeable score is credited to Chema Rosas also with Conc. C 4.Allegro Giusto by Domenico Cimarosa performed by Heinz Holliger. Criterion offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A' / 'B' Blu-ray (depending on what region you buy it in.)

Extras include a new 1/4 hour interview with director Abbas Kiarostami’s son Ahmad Kiarostami, conducted by the Criterion Collection in 2018, where he talks about the personal stories behind the films that make up The Koker Trilogy. There is also a new 20-minute conversation between scholar Jamsheed Akrami and critic Godfrey Cheshire on the subject of Abbas Kiarostami's Koker Trilogy, its importance to the New Iranian Cinema, and whether it can properly be called a trilogy at all. The Koker Trilogy Blu-ray package has a liner notes booklet with an essay by Cheshire.

Criterion's description is apt: "Abbas Kiarostami first came to international attention for this wondrous, slyly self-referential series of films set in the rural northern-Iranian town of Koker. Poised delicately between fiction and documentary, comedy and tragedy, the lyrical fables in The Koker Trilogy exemplify both the gentle humanism and the playful sleight of hand that define the director’s sensibility. With each successive film, Kiarostami takes us deeper into the behind-the-scenes “reality” of the film that preceded it, heightening our understanding of the complex network of human relationships that sustain both a movie set and a village. The result is a gradual outward zoom that reveals the cosmic majesty and mystery of ordinary life." Through the Olive Trees a beautiful film - a special depiction of the off-screen relationship between the actors portraying the newlyweds in Kiarostamis And Life Goes On from the previous year. I am thrilled to own it on Blu-ray. A very strong recommendation! 

Gary Tooze