It all started from a magazine article. In 1989, Abbas Kiarostami read an article in an Iranian magazine called Sorush. It was about a guy who impersonated Mohsen Makhmalbaf and tried to extort his film production costs from a middle-class family. His name was Houssain Sabzian. Kiarostami immediately went to court with his camera and filmed the trial. After Sabzian’s release, Kiarostami pursued the consents of the family and Sabzian to make a documentary with re-enactments. Through the film, he reveals the truth of Sabzian, who was simply treated as a conman. He followed the story to find out that Sabzian’s lies were based on his passion for films, and how he got forgiveness from the family and Makhmalbaf. All the scenes were re-enacted except for the court scene. Kiarostami took the form of re-enactment for Close-Up to find out the truth behind the wrong intention of Sabzian, going beyond the superficial truth of the incident that appeared in the press. The director also wanted Makhmalbaf and the victim family to forgive Sabzian; this was the direction in which he took the conclusion. Kiarostami constantly crosses the border between fiction and documentary to convey his message more effectively. Close-Up is also an infinite paean for “cinema.” The reason Makhmalbaf and the family forgave Sabzian was that they understood his passion for cinema. So the film wraps up with a fairytale ending. After some time, two more documentaries about Sabzian were made: Close-Up Long Shot (1996) by Mamhoud Chokrollahi and Moslem Mansouri, and Cinema School of Houssain Sabzian (2005) by Azadeh Akhlaghi. Sabzian did not make it as a director. He remained an amateur filmmaker and died of illness. In Moslem Mansouri’s 2003 documentary Trial, Sabzian appears as an amateur filmmaker at a small mountain village near Teheran. Watching Houssain Sabzian’s life will bring the feeling of sorrow, as he was not able to achieve his dream of being a director and wondered on the edge of life. (KIM Ji-seok)