Close Your Eyes (2024)
Director: Víctor Erice Run Time: 169 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2023
Starring: Ana Torrent, Jose Coronado, Manolo Solo, María León, Petra Martínez
Country: Spain, Argentina
Language: Spanish, Catalan
About the film:
World Premiere, 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
Set in contemporary Madrid, an aging filmmaker named Miguel Garay is called upon to recount his memories of working on his final and still unfinished film, The Farewell Gaze. During its production, the lead actor and Miguel’s close friend, Julio Arenas, disappeared without a trace, leaving in his wake a mystery that would haunt the lives of everyone associated with the film. Miguel never directed another project, instead living a quiet life as a writer by the coast. He remained reluctant to unravel the mystery surrounding Julio until approached by an investigative television program reviving the case decades later. With careful reflection, he reconnects with the film’s crew, former lovers, and Julio’s daughter, seeking closure for the disappearance and what it meant for all of their lives.
“A shimmery, nourishing culmination of ideas and ellipses in a career so elusive as to have taken on a mythic quality, to the point that his latest feels almost dreamed into being.”
—Guy Lodge, Variety
Over three decades after the release of his previous film, revered Spanish auteur Víctor Erice returns with a reflective culmination of his career in film though Close Your Eyes (2024), a haunting meditation on memory, absence, and the enduring resonance of the moving image.
About the filmmaker:
Víctor Erice studied in Madrid, at the Official School of Cinematography, graduating in the specialty of Cinematographic Direction in 1963. He began his career working as a scriptwriter before moving into working as a producer of advertisements and, in 1969, he made his debut as a professional director, shooting an episode of The Challenges, which debuted to great acclaim at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
Erice has been the worthy recipient of numerous awards, including the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 1973 for his first feature-length film, The Spirit of the Beehive (1973); the Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival for his second feature, El Sur (1983), which premiered in the Official Selection at Cannes; and later, in 1992, both the Jury Prize and the International Critics Award at the Cannes Film Festival for Dream of Light (1992). This film was given special recognition on being voted the best film of its decade by Film Archives and Cultural Centers from around the world.
In 2014, the Locarno Festival awarded Erice with the Leopard of Honor for his career as a filmmaker. Now, he is returning to the big screen with his fourth feature, Close Your Eyes (2024), which premiered as an Official Selection at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
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