Close-Up(1990)
dir. Abbas Kiarostami
A fraud, a trial, and the camera.
Where to watch: Criterion Channel (subscription)Letterboxd ↗
In Tehran, a man named Hossein Sabzian is arrested for posing as the filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf to a family who believed he would put them in his next film. Kiarostami reconstructs the case with the real people playing themselves and films the trial. It is a documentary and a drama at once, and it never tells you where one ends.
Why it’s here
The film asks why a man would pretend to be a director and what that says about who gets seen. What's punk is Kiarostami giving a petty fraudster the dignity of explaining himself, with the trial as theatre. What's pedagogical is the structure: reality and reenactment collide, and you see that every film is a construction. A natural companion to the Godard, Bresson and Bazin books in the catalog.
Where This Film Lives
- Setting
- Iran
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
All the Shah's Men
Stephen Kinzer
The CIA overthrew Iran's democracy. For oil.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
Anne Applebaum
The network behind every strongman.
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Darius the Great Is Not Okay
Adib Khorram
Half-Iranian, depressed, going to Iran. He finds himself there.
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Disoriental
Négar Djavadi
Three generations who outlasted two regimes.
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Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story)
Daniel Nayeri
A refugee kid tells stories to survive.
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Funny in Farsi
Firoozeh Dumas
An Iranian family in California. Dad is an eternal optimist.
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Honeymoon in Tehran
Azadeh Moaveni
She goes back to Tehran to build a life there.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
It Ain't So Awful, Falafel
Firoozeh Dumas
Iranian American in 1979. Her country is on the news. Not in a good way.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST