Hossain Sabzian

Hossain Sabzian was an Iranian man best known for being the star of the 1990 docufiction film Close-Up directed by Abbas Kiarostami, which is widely regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made and depending on who you ask the greatest film of Iran ever. In 1989, Sabzian tricked a poor family into believing he was famous Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. These events were later adapted into the previously mentioned film. He was born around 1953-1954 (or in the year 1332 on the Solar Hijri calendar) and is believed to be from Tehran from his comment about himself being “an unemployed youngster from Tehran”. He is believed to be from the weaker social class and having a poor working class background, working as a print-shop laborer since childhood. He lived in Isfahan as a boy, where he “skipped school for three months” to watch cinema and he recalled sneaking to the cinema each day until being caught by his school and being punished.

His love of cinema shaped his life and is a key aspect of it. He was once called a “impoverished, unemployed movie nut”. A film he deeply admired was Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The Cyclist (1987). Close-Up depicts Sabzian reading a book on the film the first time he and a member of the poor family he tricked, the mother Mahrokh Ahankhah, met. While many would simply label him as a con artist trying to take something from a poor family, Kiarostami’s direction in Close-Up brings empathy to him showing him as a lonely, passionate man trying to do something different even if a bit morally questionable. The film made Sabzian a legend for cinephiles and was perhaps his only chance at being noticed and seen. Despite this, in the years that followed its release, he grew into a deep depression and felt alienated in public.