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Compared with Sunnis, Shia Iranians have a relatively relaxed attitude towards visualising religious figures, which has caused controversies in the past.ĭirector Majid Majidi said his goal was to present the right image of Islam to the world.
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Muhammad’s face will not be shown on screen and the Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, the three-time Oscar-winner for masterpiecesfilms such as Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, has worked on various combinations of light and darkness to make religious depictions in the film possible.īut the biggest issue will likely be that it is produced by Shia Iran. Iran is bracing for a large international release in March, at least in the English- and Arabic-speaking worlds. Majidi’s state-sponsored film, which is the first part of an ambitious trilogy about the prophet’s life, tells the story of Muhammad from his birth to the age of 12, ending with his first visit to Sham (Syria) where Bahira, a Christian monk, is believed to have predicted he would one day become a prophet. Majidi has had his own doubts about Akkad’s biopic, which he said failed to do justice to Muhammad’s life by showing “only Jihad and war” and also because “the image of Islam in that film is the image of a sword”. The first was Moustapha Akkad’s 1976 The Message, starring Anthony Quinn, which sparked controversy despite not showing the prophet on screen to avoid hurting Muslim sensitivities. The film, to be released as Muhammad, Messenger of God” in the festival’s opening ceremony, is made by Majid Majidi, a leading pro-establishment Iranian director who has worked for more than five years – with a great deal of secrecy – to produce what is only the second big-budget feature made about the prophet. Iran has been a vocal critic of the prophet’s portrayal in the west, recently expressing strong condemnation of the Charlie Hebdo cover cartoon in the aftermath of the deadly attacks in Paris, which depicted Muhammad weeping and holding up a sign reading Je Suis Charlie.