CLOSE

Name: CLOSE
Start: 2022-10-14
End: 2022-10-15
Location: Rafael 3

Bay Area Premiere

WORLD

Belgium, Netherlands, France 2022, 105 min, Director: Lukas Dhont

Belgian director Lukas Dhont explores the delicacy of boyhood and the shifting dynamics of male friendship with heartbreaking intimacy in his assured sophomore feature. The winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Close chronicles the bond between 13-year-olds Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele), who seem inseparable—until their connection provokes teasing by classmates, leading to tragedy. Dhont, the director of the acclaimed trans drama Girl, collaborates with his sensitive young actors to create an indelible snapshot of adolescence so quietly profound and entrancing that it resembles a dream. Both a coming-of-age story and a deft inquiry into how boys struggle to process their feelings, Close is a movie about grief and denial, love and acceptance. Dambrine and De Waele, making their big-screen debuts, movingly play kids becoming aware of the emotional challenges that the wider world has in store for them. —Tim Grierson

In Dutch, Flemish, and French with English subtitles

Guest expected: writer-director Lukas Dhont

Showtimes

Director

Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont began his career making short films, including L’INFINI (2014), winner of the Best Belgian Short Film at the Ghent International Film Festival. His first feature, GIRL (2018), was Belgium’s Best Foreign Language entry for the 91st Academy Awards® and won the Golden Camera, Queer Palm, and Un Certain Regard FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.