Iranian film on prophet Muhammad set for premiere

[MADem]

....Majid Majidi’s Tehran-backed production telling the story of Muhammad’s early years to be shown at Iran’s Fajr international film festival

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.

Iran is bracing for a large international release in March, at least in the English- and Arabic-speaking worlds.

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.

But the biggest issue will likely be that it is produced by Shia Iran. Compared with Sunnis, Shia Iranians have a relatively relaxed attitude towards visualising religious figures, which has caused controversies in the past....