
Internationally revered Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the past thirty years, and CLOSE-UP is his most radical, brilliant work. This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves. With its universal themes and fascinating narrative knots, CLOSE-UP has resonated with viewers around the world.
via Criterion Collection
Rosine Mbakam
Oct 2023
Included in
Photographer’s Gaze
Position 8
Included in
Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time: Directors’ Poll
Position 56
Included in
Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time: Critics’ Poll
Position 50
Included in
Josh and Benny Safdie’s Adventures in Moviegoing
Position 7
Included in
Film Plays Itself
Position 15