Two men on a motorbike, the one on the back holding a flowerpot in a still from Close-up (1990)
Two men on a motorbike, the one on the back holding a flowerpot in a still from Close-up (1990)
Close-up (1990) Celluloid Dreams

Presented by ACMI in association with Sydney Film Festival, NFSA & Melbourne Cinémathèque

Close-Up

Nema-ye Nazdik

Abbas Kiarostami | Iran | 1990 | Unclassified (15+)
Film

This event has ended and tickets are no longer available.

Tickets

Full

$18

Concession

$14

Member

$12

When

Thu 9 Jun - Sat 18 Jun 2022

See below for additional related events

Walking a sophisticated tightrope between documentary and fiction, Close-Up takes a bizarre crime and artfully reworks it for the big screen.

The meanings of Close-Up shift, subtly and profoundly, with every viewing; the only certainty is that its rewards are boundless.

Time Out

In the late 1980s, an ordinary man Hossein Sabzian was mistaken by an elderly woman for the famous film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf (The Cyclist, 1987). Seizing the opportunity to change his fortunes, Sabzian didn’t correct the matriarch’s error and began a relationship with her family as Makhmalbaf. On reading about this bizarre deception, Kiarostami dropped the project he was working on to bring this tale of daydreams and class division to the screen. With all the real players ‘performing’ as themselves, and Kiarostami’s cameras rolling while the judicial fate of Sabzian was in play, Close-Up pushes the bounds of production, and the effect cinema has outside the frame.

For scholar and filmmaker Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, “Close-up changed the entire course of Iranian cinema. It moves and challenges the audiences in every direction and in the opening scenes alone, contains the very essence of (Kiraostami’s) cinema.” For the director himself, the film is "in praise of dreams; it’s a beautiful portrayal of a human being who has reached a dead end but still has a hold on his dreams".

– Kristy Matheson

Format: DCP
Language: In Persian-Farsi with English subtitles
Source: Celluloid Dreams
Courtesy: Celluloid Dreams
Runtime: 90 min

Event duration

90 mins

Rating

Unclassified (15+)

Where

Cinema 1, Level 2
ACMI, Fed Square

How to get there

Multipasses

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