Iranian filmmaker and poet photographer Abbas Kiarostami was an important figure in 20th-century film history. In 1969, he was invited to set up Kunan’s film department, which was then called the Center for the Intellectual Development of Child and Adolescent. Many of the films from that period, including later Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987) and Homework (1988), are primarily set in schools and classrooms. His first educational films laid the foundation for his future style of filmmaking.

In So Can I, he combines live-action and animation. While two schoolboys watch animated animals (such as jumping kangaroos and swimming fish) on TV, one boy says, “I can do that too,” and then imitates the actions. Kiarostami’s son Ahmad plays the second, silent boy.

The end of the film is especially beautiful: the boy fails to imitate a flying bird, let alone a plane flying overhead.