Victor Erice's ‘Close Your Eyes' FINALLY Picked Up For U.S. Distribution

Victor Erice’s “Close Your Eyes,” which is a lock for my 2024 top 10 list, has finally been acquired by a U.S. distributor. The Film Movement will be releasing the film in the current or next quarter of 2024. Movie fans are in for a real treat. (via IONCINEMA)

Here’s what I wrote after seeing it at Cannes:

Director Victor Erice’s first fiction film in more than 40 years is a love letter to cinema, and delivered via the story of a disappeared Spanish actor. He vanished during the filming of a movie. His body was never found. The police concluded that he suffered an accident at the edge of a cliff. His best friend believes he might have run away. It’s 169 minutes, a slow-burn with talky dialogue that builds to an emotionally powerful final scene. One for the ages.

Erice’s fourth film was one of the best films of last year’s Cannes lineup. In fact, people were puzzled by its absence from the main competition. What happened? This was Erice’s first fiction film in over 40 years.

The filmmaker published a letter in Spanish outlet El Pais claiming that he’d been hoodwinked by Cannes not putting his film in competition. Erice claimed that he sent a "work in progress" on Quicktime format to the festival, but without the final grading and mixing, on March 24. He went on to add that the Directors Fortnight sidebar wanted it as their opening film, but that he was waiting for a sign from Cannes to tell him if the film was in competition or not.

Then, a few weeks later, the Cannes lineup was announced and he was surprised by its inclusion in the “Cannes Premiere” section. Erice added that Venice also wanted the film, but Cannes didn't contact him before the lineup announcement which left him “blindsided.” He stated that if he’d known his film wouldn’t compete for the Palme d’Or then he would have premiered it elsewhere.

This is why Erice decided not to attend Cannes, to protest the “absence of dialogue” he had with the festival. His film only had one true screening on the Croisette; the second one was at a multiplex, a lengthy bus ride away from the festivities.

Erice broke out with his masterful 1973 debut “The Spirit of the Beehive”. In the half-century since his debut he has directed just three other full-length features (“El Sur”, “The Quince Tree Sun” and “Close Your Eyes”).