Life, and Nothing More... (1992) review

A filmmaker (Farhad Kheradmand, the director's stand-in) and his young son drive around earthquake-ravaged Iran in order to look for the child cast members of Where Is the Friend's House? and see if they survived.  There isn't much to it, exactly: long stretches of driving, the filmmaker asking almost everyone he sees for directions, his son asking him a lot of questions (and contemplating getting into raising grasshoppers) and, at various points, giving strangers rides around on bad roads.  Kiarostami was never above self-referencing and repeating himself, and while this film has a lived-in dusty feel about it - did anyone else go on road trips when they were younger? - all it does is record the aftermath of an environmental disaster: does he ever get to Koker?  Does it even matter?  Shaping raw material is difficult, is it not?