Majid Majidi
- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Majid Majidi was born on April 17, 1959 in Tehran, Iran to a middle
class family. He started acting in amateur theater groups at the age of
fourteen. After receiving his high school diploma, he started studying
art at the Institute of Dramatic Art in Tehran. After the Islamic
Revolution of 1979, his interest in cinema brought him to act in
various films, notably
Mohsen Makhmalbaf's
Boycott (1986) where he played a
frustrated communist and
Ali Asghar Shadravan's
The Execution (1986) where he played the
role of real life character, Andarzgoo. Later, he started writing and
directing short films. His feature film screenwriting and directing
debut is marked by Baduk (1992), which was
presented at the Quinzaine of Cannes and won awards at Tehran's Fajr
Film Festival. Since then, he has written and directed many noteworthy
films that won worldwide recognition, notably
Children of Heaven (1997),
winner of the Best Picture award at the Montreal International Film
Festival and nominated for the Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards,
The Color of Paradise (1999), which also won
the Best Picture award from Montreal International Film Festival and
set a new record of box office for an Asian film, and
Baran (2001), which won several major
awards worldwide, notably the Best Picture award at the 25th Montreal
World Film Festival and received nomination for the European Film
Academy Award. In 2001, during the Afghanistan anti-Taliban war, he
produced
Barefoot to Herat (2003),
an emotional documentary about Afghanistan's refugee camps that won the
Fipresci Award at Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Majjid
Majid has also received the Douglas Sirk Award in 2001 and the Amici
Vittorio de Sica Award in 2003. In 2005, he directed
The Willow Tree (2005) about a
blind man who falls in love with someone other than his wife when he
gets the chance to see again, which won four awards at the 2005 Fajr
Film Festival in Tehran. He is one of Iran's most influential directors
and his films have a simple and poetic feel to them.
