Close-Up

Synopsis

“The accused posed as famous director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and pretended to be making a film about a wealthy family. He appears to have been scouting out the family home to plan a robbery.” This eye-catching headline in a Teheran newspaper inspired Abbas Kiarostami to make a docufiction about the defendant's trial. By using two cameras—one with a wide-angle lens to follow the court proceedings and another to take close-up shots exposing the case's psychological dimension—he created a brilliant exploration of the power of film.

Bio/Filmo

Abbas Kiarostami (Teheran, 1940 – Paris, 2016) is an iconic Iranian filmmaker. After graduating in art, he began writing, directing and producing films, as well as making forays into painting, poetry and photography. He remained active until his death, by which time he had made some thirty short and feature films, including Through the Olive Trees (1994), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) and Certified Copy (2010). Taste of Cherry (1997) won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and put Iranian filmmaking on the world stage, despite being banned in Iran itself. The CCCB put on the exhibition Erice-Kiarostami: Correspondences in 2016.