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Beautiful in its simplicity and unfolding visual poetry, Academy Award nominee Majid Majidi's morality tale, The Willow Tree, challenges us to wrestle with our most primal fears and visceral desires. Dare we risk everything of value in our lives for something - literally - yet unseen?
University academic Youssef appears to have it all, except his sight. When through an unexpected cornea transplant he sees the world around him for the first time since childhood, the joy of sight eludes him; instead he now views his life as a series of experiences stolen from him by years of blindness.
Revealing intense pathos tinged with melancholy, this powerful film signals another level of accomplishment in Majidi's artistic evolution. As the director explains, “I realised that when a man becomes deaf to his inner dialogue and ignores the positive messages the world sends him, the only actions he could do would be selfish, violent and destructive.”
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D/P Majid Majidi S Nasser Hashemzadeh, Majid Majidi, Fouad Nahas WS GreenStreet Company L Farsi w/English subtitles TD 35mm/2005/94mins
Majid Majidi was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1959. His films include Children of Heaven (1997), The Color of Paradise (1999) and Baran (2001).