New Films: Close Up (NC) Director: Abbas Kiarostami Starring: Ali Sabizan

A stunning meditation on reality, fiction and the role of the film-maker from Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Billed as a "fictional documentary", Close Up weaves a complex but lucid story about Ali Sabizan, a film-loving impostor who is taken in by family who believe him to be famous director Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

Cutting between his trial for fraud and re-creations of his time spent with the family, Kiarostami juggles narrative perspectives and sympathies. He raises questions of the family's complicity in the deception, Sabazin's motives, and the role of both journalist and film-maker, there to exploit his story as news and frame it as drama.

Testimonies differ, witnesses are missing and evidence has been destroyed, but as Kiarostami delicately pieces together his story what emerges is a subtle philosophical debate on illusion and identity, filled with a humane but mischievous humour.