Taste of Cherry, the first Iranian film to win the Palme d’Or, will make its world theatrical debut Oct. 3 in Toronto after a little target marketing at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Abbas Kiarostami-directed film is about a man planning suicide who goes in search of an accomplice to shovel the dirt over his grave. He offers three men money to help him. Each for a different reason turns him down.

In prepping for the Toronto release, distributor Mongrel Media engineered the screening of other Kiarostami films, Where Is The Friend’s Home?, And Life Goes OnÉ and Through The Olive Trees, on very limited screens throughout the summer in order to familiarize the public with his work.

Hussain Amarshi, president of Mongrel, says the film is chasing a similar type of audience which was attracted to Palme d’Or winners of the past such as Pulp Fiction, The Piano and Secrets and Lies. With that in mind, in addition to targeting the local Iranian community through advertising in community newspapers, Mongrel was postering cinema walls and distributing flyers in Farsi and English in lineups at tiff.

Kiarostami will be on hand for a promotional screening of Taste of Cherry on Oct. 1 at the John Spotton Cinema through media sponsors NOW Magazine, The Globe and Mail and Iranian newspaper Shahrband. Bravo! will be giving away tickets.

Playing on three screens in Toronto (Canada Square, Carlton and Madison Centre Cinema), the Toronto screenings mark the first time that Kiarostami’s work has been shown in a commercial theater.

Taste of Cherry will be playing at the New York film festival on Sept. 27 and will launch in Italy and France in November.