Close-Up

Close-Up (1990) is Abbas Kiarostami's Iranian crime drama, blurring documentary and fiction, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It springs from a true incident: an out-of-work film lover named Hossein Sabzian passed himself off as the celebrated director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, talked his way into a well-off Tehran household by promising to cast them in a movie, then ended up arrested for fraud.

What makes the film extraordinary is its construction. Everyone tangled in the real case plays themselves on screen, from Sabzian to the deceived Ahankhah family to the actual Makhmalbaf. Kiarostami won permission to film the genuine courtroom and stitched those hearings together with reenacted scenes, letting the defendant explain why he so badly wanted to be someone else for a few days.

The trial becomes a meditation on what cinema means in Iran, where for the poor it is national pride and something close to faith. This is the ideal way into Kiarostami's work, and one of those rare films after which the line between truth and staging never feels solid again. Stream Close-Up (1990) online on iFILM.