Close-UpMovies like Close-Up
- Key Features:
- Mockumentary, Identity, Impersonation, Filmmaking, Social commentary, Meta-narrative, Iranian cinema, Artistic expression, Human nature, Legal drama
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Art house enthusiasts, Cinephiles, Documentary lovers, Those interested in Iranian culture
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Reflection
Close-Up

This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.
Close-Up
When the actor in a scene for his film Life And Nothing More… has to quit, a film director casts another man for the part. However, complications arise since the man and the woman who was cast for the scene know each other.

A middle-aged Tehranian man, Mr. Badii is intent on killing himself and seeks someone to bury him after his demise. Driving around the city, the seemingly well-to-do Badii meets with numerous people, including a Muslim student, asking them to take on the job, but initially he has little luck. Eventually, Badii finds a man who is up for the task because he needs the money, but his new associate soon tries to talk him out of committing suicide.

Samad is nobody’s fool. The narcotics officer has seen his share of a drug dealer’s lies and games, and his patience has come to run thin. While searching for the infamous drug baron Nasser Khakzad, he and his colleague Hamid scour the streets of Tehran, turning an overcrowded prison on its head. With his rough and dubious approach, Samad finally manages to find the criminal’s whereabouts – but things do not quite go according to plan...

After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.

Rahim is in prison because of a debt he was unable to repay. During a two-day leave, he tries to convince his creditor to withdraw his complaint against the payment of part of the sum. But things don't go as planned. Is he truly a hero?

A semi-autobiographical account of Makhmalbaf's experience as a teenager when, as a 17-year-old, he stabbed a policeman at a protest rally. Two decades later, he tracks down the policeman he injured in an attempt to make amends.

After false reports of his demise put him and his work on the map, an artist decides to continue the charade by posing as his own brother. Soon, a reporter enters his life and has a profound effect on him.

Beat Takeshi lives the busy and sometimes surreal life of a showbiz celebrity. One day he meets his blond lookalike named Kitano, a shy convenience store cashier, who, still an unknown actor, is waiting for his big break. After their paths cross, Kitano seems to begin hallucinating about becoming Beat.

The lives of three strong-willed women and a young musician cross paths in Tehran’s schizophrenic society where sex, adultery, corruption, prostitution and drugs coexist with strict religious law. In this bustling modern metropolis, avoiding prohibition has become an everyday sport and breaking taboos can be a means of personal emancipation.

In 2009, Iranian Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari was covering Iran's volatile elections for Newsweek. One of the few reporters living in the country with access to US media, he made an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in a taped interview with comedian Jason Jones. The interview was intended as satire, but if the Tehran authorities got the joke they didn't like it - and it would quickly came back to haunt Bahari when he was rousted from his family home and thrown into prison.

On a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.

Ayna is an actor and the prison is his stage. He slips into the characters of the powerful convicted in exchange of money and take their place in prison. This strange profession is borne out of a society that doesn't give him a chance to follow his passion of acting, but forces him to act in the real life. Falling in love with the girl next door changes his life equation and he decides to end this career with one last performance. But this one takes him too deep in the rabbit hole. The story unfolds on how an underdog survives in a society that is merciless and struggles his way out from the clutch of crime game which he is a part too.

Interrogated by a customs officer, a young man recounts how his life was changed during the making of a film about the Armenian genocide.

Occupied France, 1942. Gilles is arrested by SS soldiers alongside other Jews and sent to a camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids sudden execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but Gilles gets assigned a life-or-death mission: to teach Farsi to Head of Camp Koch, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Through an ingenious trick, Gilles manages to survive by inventing words of "Farsi" every day and teaching them to Koch.

A young man drops out of university and goes to the police. He's done nothing wrong he just wants a job. A particular job. Playing the victim in murder reconstructions. Maybe by getting close to death he can manage to cheat on his own.

Seeking vengeance on those who double-crossed him, an escaped prisoner impersonates an unsuspecting chef.

Though it places his own life in danger, a look-alike commoner secretly takes the place of a poisoned king to save his country from falling into chaos.

After getting out of prison, small-time crook Mardar stumbles upon a woman who looks exactly like his long-lost lover, who he attempted to kidnap 3 years ago.

A suicidal artist goes into the desert, where he finds his doppelgänger, a homicidal drifter.

A small time detective is mistaken as a CBI agent and gets embroiled in a deadly mission to save the Chief Minister from an assassination attempt.

An Egyptian-American returns to his homeland after twenty years abroad, filled with nostalgia and high hopes. But as he reconnects with his roots, he finds himself caught between two worlds—and begins to experience the reality of a country he thought he knew.

Two professional robbers, an illusionist, an expert make-up artist, a gadget expert and a hacker come together to steal Romanian gold ingots while it is in transit.

Forced out of their apartment due to dangerous works on a neighboring building, Emad and Rana move into a new flat in the center of Tehran. An incident linked to the previous tenant will dramatically change the young couple’s life.

An 8-year-old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.

Set against the backdrop of Iran's strict and oppressive legal system, this anthology film tells the stories of four men who each face a moral crisis when having to deal with death penalties.

A satirical take on the mundane absurdities of life in modern-day Iran, these nine vignettes illuminate the lighter side of enduring under authoritarian rule. Whether choosing a name for a newborn, graduating from grade school, getting a driver’s license, applying for a job, or seeking approval for a film script, if you live in Iran, you best come fluent in Orwellian discourse.

The true story of a man who posed as director Stanley Kubrick during the production of Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut, despite knowing very little about his work and looking nothing like him.

Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural Kurdish village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.

DCP DeSilva sees a way to bring to justice the feared head of a criminal empire by recruiting a man named Vijay, who looks exactly like the crime boss. The ruse works too well, and soon Vijay finds his life in danger when DeSilva, the only one who knows his true identity, dies.

An old man and a young woman meet in Tokyo. She knows nothing about him, he thinks he knows her. He welcomes her into his home, she offers him her body. But the web that is woven between them in the space of twenty four hours bears no relation to the circumstances of their encounter.

In 1994 a 13-year-old boy disappeared without a trace from his home in San Antonio, Texas. Three-and-a-half years later he is found alive thousands of miles away in a village in southern Spain with a horrifying story of kidnap and torture. His family is overjoyed to bring him home. But all is not quite as it seems.

The story of Jewish counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch, who was coerced into assisting the Nazi operation of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during World War II.

Stanisław Maria Rochowicz, a bumbling art historian, is falsely accused of stealing a painting. The alleged thief faces five years in prison. Desperate, he decides to hide in disguise as a woman until he can paint a copy of the stolen canvas. Lacking means to live, he takes jobs as a maid for a variety of colorful characters.

When his long-lost brother resurfaces, Jacobo, desperate to prove his life has added up to something, looks to scrounge up a wife. He turns to Marta, an employee at his sock factory, with whom he has a prickly relationship.

A small southwestern town sheriff finds a body in the desert with a suitcase and $500,000. He impersonates the man and stumbles into an FBI investigation.

A struggling street photographer, pressured to marry by his grandmother, convinces a shy stranger to pose as his fiancée. The pair develops a connection that transforms them in ways that they could not expect.

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has been barred from leaving the country, arrives at a village on the Iran-Turkey border to supervise a film based on a real-life couple seeking passports to Europe being shot in Turkey, but both his stay and the production run into trouble.

A multi-dimensional interface between a comic book artist, a novelist, and a film director. Each lives in a separate reality but authors a story about one of the others.

A comedy centered around three people who each have a lookalike of a lookalike, all with the same name.

A journalist descends into the dark underbelly of the Iranian holy city of Mashhad as she investigates the serial killings of sex workers by the so called "Spider Killer", who believes he is cleansing the streets of sinners.

Federico Fellini welcomes us into his world of film making with a mockumentary about his life in film, as a Japanese film crew follows him around.

Fictional documentary about the life of human chameleon Leonard Zelig, a man who becomes a celebrity in the 1920s due to his ability to look and act like whoever is around him. Clever editing places Zelig in real newsreel footage of Woodrow Wilson, Babe Ruth, and others.

In 1980, the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews and are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy.

A man on the run takes another man's passport, only to find himself stuck with the identity of a street hustler.

A young camgirl discovers that she’s inexplicably been replaced on her site with an exact replica of herself.

In Tuscany to promote his latest book, a middle-aged English writer meets a French woman who leads him to the village of Lucignano.

A chilling vision of the House of Saddam Hussein comes to life through the eyes of the man who was forced to become the double of Hussein's sadistic son.

The day after his funeral, the corpse of Varlam Aravidze, the mayor of a small Georgian town, turns up in his son's garden. Although it is secretly reburied, the corpse keeps returning until the police capture the local woman who is responsible. This woman says that Varlam should never be laid to rest since his Stalin-like reign of terror led to the disappearance of her family and friends.

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.

A fugitive stumbles onto a movie set just when they need a new stunt man, takes the job as a way to hide out and falls for the leading lady while facing off with his manipulative director.

Rouhi, a young bride-to-be, is hired as a maid for an affluent family in Tehran. Upon arriving, she is suddenly thrust into an explosive domestic conflict. The wife is convinced her husband is having an affair and enlists Rouhi as a spy, to follow her husband, and confirm her suspicions. What Rouhi discovers, however, threatens not only their marriage but her own future.

Filmmaker Jafar Panahi and actor Behnaz Jafari travel to a tiny village after receiving a plea for help from a girl whose family has forbidden her from studying acting. Amusing encounters abound, but they soon discover that the local hospitality is rivaled by the desire to protect old traditions.

An awkward office drone becomes increasingly unhinged after a charismatic and confident look-alike takes a job at his workplace and seduces the woman he desires.

Vahid, an Azerbaijani auto mechanic, was once imprisoned by Iranian authorities. During his sentence, he was interrogated blindfolded. One day, a man named Eqbal enters his workshop. His prosthetic leg creaks, and Vahid thinks he recognizes one of his former torturers.

A renowned ophthalmologist is desperate to cut off an adulterous relationship…which ends up in murder; and a frustrated documentary filmmaker woos an attractive television producer while making a film about her insufferably self-centered boss.

A ruthless gangster named Don is killed during a scuffle with the police. Since only DSP D'Silva knows of this incident, he recruits Vijay, who is a spitting image of Don, to replace the original Don and infiltrate his gang. D'Silva plans to nab the entire gang, but when he dies during a raid, the secret that Vijay is not Don is also buried with him.

A village girl agrees to a marriage to a king she has never met after he sends her a photograph of himself. But the man in the photograph is not the king but his most loyal slave, the handsome but mute Shankar.

Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas.

When an Egyptian terrorism suspect "disappears" on a flight from Africa to Washington DC, his American wife and a CIA analyst find themselves caught up in a struggle to secure his release from a secret detention facility somewhere outside the US.

A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.

A story of a man who fakes his own death and assumes a new identity in order to escape his life, who then moves in with a woman who is also trying to leave her past behind.

Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.

A privileged Delhi socialite hires a middle-class student to pose as her boyfriend to maintain her social status. Their pretense becomes complicated when genuine feelings develop between them.

A yellow cab is driving through the vibrant and colourful streets of Tehran. Very diverse passengers enter the taxi, each candidly expressing their views while being interviewed by the driver who is no one else but the director Jafar Panahi himself. His camera placed on the dashboard of his mobile film studio captures the spirit of Iranian society through this comedic and dramatic drive…

After the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the restriction of women in public life, a preteen girl is forced to masquerade as a boy in order to find work to support her mother and grandmother.

When an armed, masked gang enter a Manhattan bank, lock the doors and take hostages, the detective assigned to effect their release enters negotiations preoccupied with corruption charges he is facing.

Dressed as a clown, the clever rascal Grimm holds up the most secure bank of Montreal and takes 30 hostages. While confusing and ridiculing the police with his strange behavior, he calmly manages to rid the bank of a fortune. But then an unsatisfied companion arouses trouble...

An old villager deeply in love with his cow goes to the capital for a while. While he's there, the cow dies and now the villagers are afraid of his possible reaction to it when he returns.

A professional lady con makes herself the pharmacist's fiancée overnight, and faces a disastrous blemish in her impeccable con-woman career.

Reza, residing in the wilderness with his wife and son, lives a retired life and devotes himself to freshwater fish farming. A private company that has targets on his land is ready to do anything to force him to sell.

Kathiresan aka Kaththi, a criminal, escapes from the Kolkata prison and comes to Chennai, where he comes across his doppelganger Jeevanandham, fighting for his life after being shot at by unknown men. Kathir decides to pass off as Jeeva and make away with a lump sum amount but once he realizes who Jeeva really is, Kathir turns a crusader.

A man who bears a striking resemblance to a renowned movie star becomes an obsessive fan, but when his fierce love is spurned by the star, he decides to destroy the star's life and reputation.

After a public spat with a movie star, a disgraced director retaliates by kidnapping the actor's daughter, filming the search for her in real-time.

During the 2006 World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain, numerous young women are caught and rounded up for dressing as men so they could gain access to the game. Guarded by several soldiers in a holding pen, the women attempt to keep updated on the score.

A world-class hitman ends up swapping identities with a down-to-luck extra actor during an accident.

Pizza man Hussein is a daily witnesses to the unjust distribution of wealth in his native Iran. One day, he finds a purse filled with shockingly expensive receipts from an upscale jewelry store. He attempts to bring the purse back to the store, but because of his working-class attire, he's not allowed inside. Then, during a delivery, a rich man invites Hussein into his extravagant mansion – an event that spurs Hussein to make a desperate bid for wealth.

A young French journalist repeatedly meets iconic surrealist artist Salvador Dalí for a documentary project that never came to be.

A con artist poses as a film director in a village with the intention of executing a caper with the unwitting help of the villagers.

During the Republican era, a group of frustrated people from the movie industry is invited in a luxurious mansion to make a movie out of a gruesome case that has recently rattled the city of Shanghai, in the hopes that it would turn into a huge sensation and make them famous. However, they never expected that the murderer would be in their midst and that the truth behind the case would be far more bizarre than their fictional movie plot.

Sam, a freelance journalist, decides to investigate the growing phenomenon of disaffected youth joining extremist groups. He infiltrates a group of four young people who have been tasked with the creation of a jihadist cell and whose mission is to destabilise the city centre of Paris.

Between his tax problems and his legal battle with his wife for the custody of his daughter, these are hard times for the action movie star who finds that even Steven Seagal has pinched a role from him! This fictionalized version of Jean-Claude Van Damme returns to the country of his birth to seek the peace and tranquility he can no longer enjoy in the United States, but inadvertently gets involved in a bank robbery with hostages.

Love is a business at Family Romance, a company that rents human stand-ins for any occasion. Founder Yuichi Ishii helps make his clients’ dreams come true. But when the mother of 12-year-old Mahiro hires Ishii to impersonate her missing father, the line between acting and reality threatens to blur.

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?

A washed up actor best known for playing the title character in the 1980s detective show "Mindhorn" must work with the police when a serial killer says that he will only speak with Detective Mindhorn, whom he believes to be real.

The Gestapo forces con man Victorio Bardone to impersonate a dead partisan general in order to extract information from his fellow inmates.

Nandan, a middle-class man, finds a suitcase full of money near his workplace and steals it. However, he is soon chased by a police officer, a notorious gangster and a corrupt politician.

A failed actor switches identities with a stranger at a bath house thinking it is his way out of his life of misery but only to find himself filling the shoes of an elite assassin.

Iranian musicians Negar and Ashkan look for band members to play at a London concert ... and the visa that allows them to leave Tehran to do so.

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

Looking to investigate recruitment techniques of ISIS to lure women into Syria, a journalist creates a Facebook profile of a Muslim convert. When an ISIS recruiter contacts her online character, she experiences the process first hand.

The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.

Louis just found the corpse of a man in front of his apartment building. Taken in for custody by Captain Buron, he finds himself on the wrong end of a surreal interrogation. But how can you prove you are innocent when the cops are crazy?

When civil engineer Siddharth is arrested for a murder on the basis of a pictorial evidence, cops discover his lookalike Aditya and realize they have only 48 hours to solve the case.

Hoping to leave his criminal lifestyle behind him, a successful art thief teams up with a sexy con woman to pull off the ultimate heist and set himself free.

In the early 1980s India, a group of con artists rob businessmen and politicians by conducting fake raids, posing as officers of the CBI or Income Tax Department . They plan to execute their biggest con as a final job while a relentless cop is on their trail.

In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.


