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.

In his adult life, Sabzian, particularly before the film, worked in a printing press and made a few amateur films even shooting “home wedding videos” however struggled to finance a career in filmmaking. He spent much of his time writing scripts but none of them became official. He became unemployed in the late-1980s. In 1989, Kiarostami learned of Sabzian’s story from a magazine article and arranged to film his trial. The net result was that Sabzian served a short time in jail and was freed after the family “pardons him due to his lack of criminal intent” (understanding he had acted out of love for cinema) Sabzian faced no further punishment. He made a living in his final years selling pirated DVDs at Tehran bus stations. In his life, he had chronic asthma and his health declined due to it. On the way to meet Kairostami again on another film, he collapsed from respiratory failure on a crowded subway and lapsed into a coma. One account notes he spent 102 days in a coma before he passed away on September 29, 2006 at the age of 52.