Spine 519: Close-up

Abbas Kiarostami's Close-up (1990) explores a real-life incident of celebrity impersonation in late '80s Iran through a mixture of documentary, recreation, and the director guiding the narrative as events still unfold. Because of that last element, exactly what mix of reality and fiction exists is up for debate, and in the end, much of what really happened only happened because of Kiarostami's influence. But beyond all the questions of manipulation, there's also a picture of class relations in Iran at the time.