A prime example of Kiarostami's mid-period films, which revolve
around cinema itself. Here, he focuses on the strange case of Hossein
Sabzian, a film fanatic who cons a middle class family into believing he
is the famous director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Cutting between close up
footage of Sabzian's trial for fraud and reconstructions of the events
- using Sabzian and the family themselves as actors - it works in the
space between fiction and documentary, raising questions about the
nature of truth, knowledge and representation. Highly influential
and thought-provoking, its final scenes are among modern cinema's
most moving.
