#519: KIAROSTAMI, Abbas: Close-up (1990)

KIAROSTAMI, Abbas (Iran)

Close-up [1990]

Spine #519
Blu-ray

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 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.

98 minutes
Color

Monaural

in Persian

1:33:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2010

Director/Writer

Abbas Kiarostami was 50 when he wrote and directed Close-up.

Other Kiarostami films in the Collection:

#990: Where Is The Friend's House? (1987)
#991: And Life Goes On (1992)
#992: Through The Olive Trees (1994)
#45: Taste Of Cherry (1997)
#612: Certified Copy (2010)
#708: Like Someone In Love (2012)
#956: 24 Frames (2017)

The Film

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Sixteen-page booklet featuring an essay by film critic Godfrey Cheshire.

Commentary

By Mehmaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum, authors of Abbas Kiarostami.

The Traveler

Director Kiarostami’s first feature.

“Close-up” Long Shot

A documentary on Close-up’s central figure, Hossein Sabzian, six years after the film.

Video interview

With Kiarostami.

A Walk with Kiarostami

A documentary portrait of the director by Iranian film professor Jamsheed Akrami.

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

99

By Director
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