Sightlines · reception
How Close-Up was received
1990 · Abbas Kiarostami · Close-Up on Sightlines
The arc
Barely a ripple in Iran on release — Kiarostami himself said local critics were dismissive — but as it toured festivals it became the film that put Iranian cinema on the world map, and by the 2022 Sight & Sound critics' poll it had climbed into the top 20 greatest films of all time.
What’s debated
The perennial cinephile argument is an ethical one: is it a profound act of empathy or an uncomfortable one, with real people — including a man fresh from a real arrest — re-staging the most humiliating episode of their own lives for a director's camera?
Its footprint
It's the ur-text of the documentary/fiction blur that half of modern festival cinema trades on, and the rolling spray-paint can is one of the most written-about 'nothing' shots in movies; Nanni Moretti even made a short film, 'The Opening Day of Close-Up' (1996), about the anxiety of programming it at his own Rome cinema.
Where it stands
Firmly in 'you must have seen this' territory — the consensus pick for the greatest Iranian film and the standard gateway into Kiarostami, beloved on Letterboxd as cinema's warmest movie about loving movies.
Did you know? Kiarostami read a magazine article about the case, dropped the film he was preparing, and rushed to get permission to shoot the actual court proceedings — then had everyone involved, on all sides of the case, play themselves in the re-enactments.