Close-Up
dir. Abbas Kiarostami · 1990
People often seek connection and meaning through the stories they tell and the roles they play in each other's lives.
"Close-Up" transcends conventional storytelling by merging documentary and fiction, inviting viewers into a profound exploration of identity, art, and the blurred boundaries of reality. Kiarostami's film is a meditative journey that challenges audiences to reconsider the nature of truth in cinema.
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.
