Close-Up

"Close-Up" is a kind of documentary fiction that brought the director fame in the West. It is based on a real story about a man who pretended to be the famous director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and deceived people by promising them roles in his non-existent film.

Here's what the wonderful philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy writes about this beautiful film: "In this film, what could have been a story of harmless delusion or an exposure of cinematographic illusion ends up, on the contrary, as the appearance of a genuine director - or even two genuine directors: the one who was imitated and Kiarostami himself - and at the same time, a return to reality, marked by a kind of progressive fading of the film, whose sound constantly disappears, while the images blur and dissolve into an intense whirl of reflections, gliding from the windshield to the rearview mirror (starry glimmers, full of reflections), and it seems to be heard: 'Now I understand everything!', and a bouquet of red flowers, whose color is clearly chosen deliberately, cuts through the dark gray picture of the noisy street - a bouquet that is just like the main sign of cinema itself: the unfolding of a gaze in the midst of everyday hustle and bustle."