Preview

Close Your Eyes

Cerrar los ojos

Víctor Erice’s latest cinematic gem, at once a mystery about an actor’s sudden disappearance from a film shoot, and a meditation on memory, identity, friendship – and the power of cinema.

  • Director

    Víctor Erice

  • With

    Manolo Solo, Jose Coronado, Ana Torrent, María León, Max Roca

  • Spain 2023. 169min

  • Digital

  • Certificate

    12A

  • English subtitles

  • A New Wave release

Víctor Erice’s first feature in three decades is a characteristically ambitious, richly satisfying meditation on memory, identity, family, friendship… and cinema. Twenty years after an actor’s mysterious disappearance led to a movie-shoot being abandoned, the director, whose career subsequently stalled, reluctantly contributes to a missing-persons television documentary which, once broadcast, has unexpected consequences for a great many people… Besides succeeding splendidly as engrossing drama, Close Your Eyes is rewarding as a magisterial summation of Erice’s abiding preoccupations. Drawing and building on his own earlier films and unfinished projects while paying tribute to admired auteurs (Sternberg, Hawks, Ray et al), Erice has created a lovely, multi-layered work that is deeply personal, psychologically astute, philosophically profound, and very moving in its warm, generous humanity.

Geoff Andrew, Programmer-at-large

Joint ticket available with The Art of Seeing: The Lifelong Passion of Víctor Erice on Wednesday 27 March £19, concessions £16 (Members pay £2 less).

See other screenings of Close Your Eyes, including our Seniors’ paid matinee with intro by Dr Belén Vidal, Reader in Film Studies on Monday 15 April.

See our Víctor Erice season.