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.
Direction
Kiarostami blurs reality and reenactment so completely you'll question everything
Writing
The courtroom scenes use actual trial transcripts—nobody writes dialogue this real
Acting
Sabzian playing himself playing Makhmalbaf: layers upon heartbreaking layers
Director
Abbas Kiarostami
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Sabzian was still in debt when filming began; Kiarostami only discovered the case through a newspaper article by a journalist friend.
IR
