1990 · drama · documentary
Close-Up
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami1h 38m1990
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.
Our read: Close-Up (1990) reads as a neutral, slow-burn, inventive drama · documentary entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook, with a strong directorial signature.
Neutral, slow-burn, measured drama / documentary, inventive in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured.
- slow-burn
- inventive
- signature
- intimate
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How Close-Up feels to watch.
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What watching it is actually like.
“You want a gentle meditation on movies, identity, and compassion through a real trial.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if you need plot momentum; this unfolds quietly in a courtroom.
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