Close-Up

"The most important film of 1990's."—Godfrey Cheshire, New York Press

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's breakthrough masterpiece is a captivating ode to cinema that sees a young man arrested on charges of impersonating the well-known Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Real people from the case play themselves in this stunning fusion of fiction and documentary, which is now widely regarded as one of the major films of the late 20th century. Veteran Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa voiced the wonder shared by many when he commented, "Kiarostami's films are extraordinary. Words can't relate my feelings. See his movies and then you'll see what I mean." (98 mins., 35mm)

Kiarostami’s films have screened at the Wexner Center on many occasions, and the director himself introduced a visiting filmmaker presentation in 1998. After an extremely productive decade of work, Kiarostami was selected the top filmmaker of the 1990s in both a Cinematheque Ontario poll of film curators and a Film Comment critics poll in 2000. He has spent much time since then working on smaller projects but triumphantly returned to narrative feature films with Certified Copy, starring Juliette Binoche, in 2010.