Paris on screen: find a different view of city life at Close-Up

A cinema seat can be a useful place to start understanding a city. Streets that seem ordinary on the way to work become settings for encounters, arguments and private lives. Close-Up, the Paris-region film festival devoted to cities, architecture and landscapes, makes those connections its subject from 17 to 24 November 2026.

For someone settling into Paris, the attraction is not simply a list of films about buildings. This is a chance to discover cinemas and cultural venues while looking at how people inhabit places, from the architecture of a family home to the public spaces of Tehran. The sixth edition brings together 100 sessions across 30 venues in Paris, Grand Paris and Île-de-France, alongside photography, encounters and cinema concerts. The festival was founded, and is artistically directed, by Aldo Bearzatto and Hervé Bougon.

Start with a free weekend at the Cité

The Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine programme offers a manageable introduction from Friday 20 to Sunday 22 November. Its screenings and talks are free, but registration is compulsory and places are limited. That is different from the wider festival: Paris’s official listing includes both free and paid events, so check each session rather than expecting one admission rule everywhere.

On Friday at 19:00, Night Flight pairs moving images with a live electronic soundtrack. Jean-Yves Leloup, performing as Quiet Voices, and Mathilde Mallen, known as Dissemblance, rework cinema imagery with music drawing on ambient and cold wave. The 70-minute performance is not recommended for under-16s. For visitors drawn to the relationship between sound and images, it offers a different starting point from a conventional documentary screening.

A family portrait through architecture

Saturday’s 13:45 screening, Stardust: A Story of Love and Architecture, follows Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown through the work and places they shared. The 2025 American documentary is by Jim Venturi and Anita Naughton, with the architects’ son bringing a family perspective to the story.

The festival describes a film built from more than a decade of filming and conversations with architects, artists and collaborators. Rome, Paris and Las Vegas are among the places through which it explores the couple’s outlook. Rather than requiring a visitor to arrive with a specialist knowledge of architecture, that personal approach offers a way into questions about taste, ordinary landscapes and who gets to shape the spaces around us.

Look beyond Paris

The festival’s Tehran focus brings another city into view. Its selection includes Jafar Panahi’s The Mirror and Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s Under the Skin of the City. In her introduction, cinema specialist Asal Bagheri explores how Iranian films move between streets, homes and the boundaries of public and private life.

That is a useful thread for choosing a session: not just where a film was made, but whose experience of a city it lets us see. The broader programme also includes an architecture strand and activities for younger audiences. Check the individual listings for age guidance, language and subtitle arrangements; do not assume every screening or discussion will be accessible in English.

The festival also offers a reason to look beyond the cinema closest to home. New venues in this edition include Alice Guy in Bobigny, MU at La Villette and Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris. With sessions spread across the region, choose the venue as carefully as the film: a programme listing for Paris does not mean that every screening is within the same neighbourhood.

Plan one visit, not the whole festival

For the Cité events, use the garden-side entrance at 7 avenue Albert de Mun, 75116 Paris. The venue lists Iéna and Trocadéro as nearby Métro stops. Open the registration link for your chosen session before travelling, and confirm its current booking status.

One film and a conversation afterwards can be a better introduction than an overfilled itinerary. If you would also like to meet local associations through music and shared meals, Babylon’s Festisol guide offers a separate route into community events around France this autumn. For German-language cinema still running in France, Babylon’s Augenblick guide covers screenings across Alsace until 20 November.

Photo: artonthefly / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Perspective-adjusted by Paris 16. Cropped.