Film Forum

From the internationally acclaimed director of THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (1973) and EL SUR (1983): Víctor Erice’s first feature film in 31 years. Centered around a lurid film-within-a-film, a mysteriously disappeared actor and the stalled late-career filmmaker who becomes obsessed with finding him, Erice masterfully paints a literal journey from Madrid to the Andalusian coast, and a profoundly poetic (and semi-autobiographical) one — through memory, disappointment, and, finally, the magic of cinema.  

Presented with support from the Robert E. Appel Fund for Spanish and Portuguese Language Films

2023     164 MIN.     SPAIN     IN SPANISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES     FILM MOVEMENT

Reviews

"A legendary filmmaker makes a stunning return. In his first feature in more than two decades, the Spanish director Víctor Erice tells a story haunted by the ghosts of cinema past...quietly astonishing."
– Justin Chang, The New Yorker
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“Few filmmakers have such a hold on cineastes with such a slim body of work…a long-awaited return for the eighty-two-year-old director, a career summation and an exquisite reckoning of cinema’s power to haunt and enchant… Erice’s filmmaking remains as fresh and clear, as unfussily elegant, as ever.”
– Leigh Singer, Sight and Sound

“A moving meditation on existence, memory, and cinema’s potential to preserve them both.”
– Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

“A 21st century masterpiece about remembering and forgetting the 20th century…After three decades, Erice has barely missed a beat.”
– Soham Gadre, Paste

★★★★ “The opening twenty minutes…are as quietly spellbinding as anything you’ll see this year, or decade, or century…The searching of a now-84-year-old maestro of cinema is exquisitely moving.”
– Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

Critics Pick “A gently shattering tribute to the magic of film.”
 – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“An elegiac, career-capping epic…moves with the serious, searching energy of a great artist through a cold and cloudy sea of memory, loss, grief and regret, pausing in the patches of warmth it finds in longtime friends and humble pleasures…Watching CLOSE YOUR EYES, we marvel at Mr. Erice’s sweeping artistry, having found it alive and well.”
– Zachary Barnes, The Wall Street Journal

“Mesmerizing… A stirring tale about memory, identity, and friendship.”
– Bilge Ebiri, Vulture