Film: Close-Up

FILM: CLOSE-UP
1990, dir. Abbas Kiarostami

The fiction-documentary hybrid Close-Up uses a sensational real-life event that occurred in Tehran in the ’80s- the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf and conned his way into a middle-class family’s home- 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. This fascinating and intensely moving film from director Abbas Kiarostami is a meditation on art and identity like no other. One of a handful of true modernist milestones in the history of cinema that has resonated with viewers around the world.