Closer

Filmmaker Tina Gharavi saw Annelise Rodger for the first time in a discotheque, where she was dancing as if her life depended on it. Fascinated by the teenager, she decided to trace her. Annelise lives in Newcastle, is seventeen years old and turns out to be a lesbian. Subsequently, Gharavi and Annelise closely collaborated in making the documentary, so Closer could be called a self-portrait of a candid young woman who does not hesitate to talk about sexuality and demonstrate it. Closer does not shun experiments: the film reconstructs the moment when Annelise, at the age of thirteen, first told her mother she was a lesbian. In a strange mixture of fiction and reality, mother and daughter now re-enact that painful situation. The people in the camera crew come into shot too, filming the confrontation from different perspectives. What is real and what has been manipulated for the benefit of the documentary? (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)