Close-Up (1990)

Kiarostami recognizes the significance of Sabzian's impersonation as an affront to realism rooted in genuine passion for art and cinema as emancipator. The film is the definitive commentary on film itself, with its genius lying in making the spectator share that passion through intimate camerawork and the authenticity of closeness.

The film blends documentary footage of a real trial with re-enactments to explore the blurred lines between pretense and truth, art and reality. Kiarostami's formal daring, including long takes that shift focus from plot to everyday moments, makes it bracing and philosophically rich.

The critic calls it Kiarostami’s most complete and intricate examination of illusion and cinema, the emblematic work of the Iranian New Wave. He singles out the way the film blends documentary and reenactment, with all participants playing themselves, to explore identity and the power of movies.

The critic calls it a stunning meditation on reality, fiction and the film-maker's role. Kiarostami's generous use of non-actors in a real-life based story creates a moving, humane work that realises the protagonist's dream of cinematic recognition.

The capsule describes the reflexive 1990 drama about an impostor who poses as a director and Kiarostami’s re-enactment of the case with the real participants. It praises the ironic politics and the way the film’s calmly unwavering images, wry humor, and generous sympathy resist religious dogma.

The film is a brilliant, knotty work that seamlessly blends dramatized reconstructions with documentary footage of a real fraud case. It stands out for its radically drab cinema-verite style that blurs the line between reality and reconstruction while exploring the pathos of a man's longing to feel like somebody through impersonation.

Kiarostami's masterpiece alternates trial scenes with reconstructions to interrogate fiction, documentary, truth and falsehood in a complex yet clear narrative. It is enormously intelligent, witty, poignant, engrossing and ends with a sharp deconstruction of film form.

The film blurs documentary and fiction through its fragmented narrative of a fraud trial and re-enactments. It reveals the accused as a decent man while exploring truth, reality and the director's role, driven by compassion and philosophical curiosity.

The critic praises the film's genre-bending experiment that plays with cinematic and documentary truth through a real-life impersonation story, using actual participants and trial footage. It stands out for its sly humor, deconstructionism, and straightforward fulfillment compared to the director's other work.