Close-Up

“A real-life situation based on a real incident in actual locations with actual people involved.”

Hossain Sabzian (Hossain Sabzian) loves cinema so much that he lets a woman on a Tehran bus mistake him for Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the director he admires, and the Ahankhah family takes him in as the man who will put them in his next film. Abbas Kiarostami filmed the real trial and had the real people re-enact what came before it, so everyone on screen plays himself. Sabzian sits in the courtroom and tries to explain why he did it.