Majid Majidi was born in Tehran in 1959. He grew up in this city and at the age of fourteen he started acting in amateur theatrical groups. He then studied at the Institute of Dramatic Art in Tehran. After the Islamic revolution in 1978, his interest in cinema brought him to act in various films, notably Boycott (1985) by Mohsen Makhmalbaf. His début as a director and screen-writer is marked by Baduk (1992). Since then, he wrote and directed several films. His Children of Heaven (1997) won the Best Picture Award at the Montreal International Film Festival and was nominated for best foreign film at the Oscar Academy Awards. Another film by Majidi, The Color of Paradise, was selected as one of the best ten films of year 2000 by Time Magazine and by the New York Times. This film set a box office record for an Iranian film in the usa. His last film, Baran, won the Best Picture Award at the Montreal International Film Festival in 2001. In 2002, he produced Barefoot to Herat, an emotional documentary on Afghanistan refugee camps.