Close Your Eyes

(Spain/2023—directed by Victor Erice)

With his knockout 1973 feature The Spirit of the Beehive, Spanish director Victor Erice first burst on to the international film scene. Close Your Eyes, Erice's fourth feature film in 50 years, is a rapturously mature work of fiction that radiates the wise glow of an autobiography.

Close Your Eyes is the tale of a late-career filmmaker, Miguel, (Manolo Solo) whose creativity has stalled, and who decides to reconnect with a mysteriously disappeared actor from his past (Jose Coronado). In the process of tracking him down, Miguel must come to terms with the long arc of his life, and face the irrevocably changed techniques of his beloved art of filmmaking.

With rich performances from a cast that includes Ana Torrent (Beehive’s unforgettable child star), Close Your Eyes is a poignant, majestic work that conjures the cinema’s magical ability to touch the soul. In Spanish with English subtitles. Special Award, 2024 National Society of Film Critics. (169 minutes)

“An exquisite and elegant reckoning of cinema’s power to haunt and enchant." –Leigh Singer, Sight & Sound