Original title: Cerrar los ojos

A Spanish actor disappears during the filming of a movie. Although his body is never found, the police conclude that he has suffered an accident at the edge of a cliff. Many years later, the mystery returns to the present day.

In Spanish with English subtitles.

Certified Fresh at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes

WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:

“A stunning return. A quietly astonishing new movie…has its own warm spirit of optimism but, happily, none of the self-regarding solipsism you might fear from such a personal valentine to cinema.” – The New Yorker

“Erice’s fourth feature is a stirring tale about memory, identity, and friendship, and it feels deeply, almost alarmingly personal.” – New York Magazine

“[A]n elegiac, career-capping epic…Watching Close Your Eyes, we marvel at Mr. Erice’s sweeping artistry, having found it alive and well.” – Wall Street Journal

“For those of us who love the movies as a medium for connection, the climax is something close to bliss.” – Rolling Stone

“Close Your Eyes is a deeply personal capstone by the 84-year-old artist.” – Reverse Shot

“Quietly transcendent, Close Your Eyes may be among the best films you see all year…You don’t have to know Erice’s work to get swept up in Close Your Eyes. But those who do know his work will find the new film an almost unbearably moving experience.” – Fresh Air, NPR

“It’s concurrently a love letter and a eulogy to the form, which Erice professes as having a life after death, though ever more tenuously so due to the existential carelessness that’s come with digital cinema versus celluloid.” – Chicago Reader

“4/4 STARS. The movie’s senses of cinema are never present for self-consciously clever, self-referential reasons. Rather, they’re deeply intertwined with considerations of age and mortality. The searching of a now-84-year-old maestro of cinema is exquisitely moving and speaks with an urgency that isn’t at all undermined by the films languid pace.” – RogerEbert.com

“A poignant cinematic swan song.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“A slow-burn marvel which climaxes in a sequence of overwhelming profundity and mystery.” – Little White Lies

“[A] breathtakingly melancholic film infused with mourning, journeying its way through subtly painful yet often poetic conversations about searching for something lost that may never be found. That only makes all the discoveries it makes that much more stunning to behold.” – Collider

“A passionate, big-issue film from revered Spanish maestro Victor Erice, Close Your Eyes engagingly reflects on art, memory, identity and recapturing time past.” – The Film Verdict