Realism And Scripted Recreations Collide In Close-Up

Utilizing the filming style of a documentary for a fictional scripted affair is a style of filmmaking that's existed for eons now and has been popularized in the modern era by the likes of The Office and Borat. A cousin of sorts to that type of movie is the Docufiction, which merges documentary with fictional elements. The first American entry in this subgenre is apparently the 1926 motion picture Moana (yes, there was another Moana before last year's Disney musical), but one of the more acclaimed examples of this style of storytelling is an Iranian film from Abbas Kiarostami released in 1990 called Close-Up,

Rosewater Review

A Rose By Any Other Name

When progressing to the world of directing, one has to wonder what one is trying to accomplish in this endeavor. Do you want to entertain? Do you want to say something profound? For Jon Stewart, his first directorial effort in the world of feature length cinema is Rosewater (a movie he also wrote), a feature centering around a story that does seem like it would particularly resonate with Stewart, considering his investment in not only politics matters but also journalism as a whole.