Program: Tributes
Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi was born in 1959 to a middle-class family in Tehran, where he grew up. At fourteen, he started acting in amateur theater troupes, and eventually enrolled at the Institute of Dramatic Art. Developing an interest in cinema after the Islamic Revolution in 1978, he appeared in various films, most notably Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Boycott (1985). His first feature, Baduk, which he wrote as well as directed in 1992, was presented during the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and won several awards in Iran. Since then, he has written and directed several films that have received worldwide attention, notably Children of Heaven (1997), which won Best Picture at the Montréal World Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1999 Academy Awards—the only Iranian film to date to get the nod from Oscar. The Color of Paradise (1999) likewise won Best Picture at the Montréal World Film Festival and was named one of the ten best films of 2000 by both the New York Times and Time Magazine—even as it managed to set box office records for an Iranian release in the United States. In 2001, Baran won seven major awards at the Tehran International Film Festival, and his 2005 film The Willow Tree has just completed a successful run in U.S. theaters. To top it all off, just this year, Majidi’s The Song of Sparrows earned a Golden Bear nomination while garnering its lead actor, Mohammad Amir Naji, a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Majid Majidi will appear at screenings of both The Song of Sparrows and Children of Heaven.