# The Color of Paradise (رنگ خدا)
**The Color of Paradise** (Persian: رنگ خدا, *Rang-e khoda*) is a 1999 Iranian drama film written and directed by [Majid Majidi](https://www.edgepedia.org/majid-majidi), telling the story of Mohammad, a blind eight-year-old boy whose widowed father, ashamed of the boy's blindness and eager to remarry, tries to place him with a blind carpenter far from home.[1](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/film/%D8%B1%D9%86%DA%AF-%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7/) • [2](https://www.deseret.com/2000/7/21/19519189/paradise-a-realistic-dark-story/) The film won Best Film at the 1999 Montreal World Film Festival and was distributed in the United States by [Sony Pictures Classics](https://www.edgepedia.org/sony-pictures-classics) in 2000.[3](https://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/21959/the-colour-of-paradise) • [4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/color_of_paradise)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | رنگ خدا (*Rang-e khoda*), Persian-language drama from Iran[1](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/film/%D8%B1%D9%86%DA%AF-%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7/) |
| Director and writer | Majid Majidi, his fourth feature film[1](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/film/%D8%B1%D9%86%DA%AF-%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7/) • [5](http://www.bifan.kr/eng/bifan/history_program_view.asp?pk%5Fseq%3D5049%26sc%5Fcategory1%3D%26sc%5Fyear%3D2001) |
| Principal cast | Mohsen Ramezani as Mohammad, Hossein Mahjoub as Hashem, Salameh Feyzi as the grandmother[1](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/film/%D8%B1%D9%86%DA%AF-%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7/) |
| Production | Varahonar Film Company; cinematography by Mohammad Davoudi[1](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/film/%D8%B1%D9%86%DA%AF-%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7/) |
| US release | Sony Pictures Classics, limited release from March 24, 2000; US gross $1.8 million[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/color_of_paradise) • [6](https://moviearchive.phase9.tv/movies/colorofparadise.shtml) |
| Major award | Best Film, Montreal World Film Festival 1999[3](https://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/21959/the-colour-of-paradise) |
| Critical scores | 87% Tomatometer (31 reviews); Metascore 80 from 25 critic reviews[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/color_of_paradise) • [7](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-color-of-paradise/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Mohammad (Mohsen Ramezani) studies at a school for blind children in Tehran and returns home to his village in northern Iran for the summer holidays. His father, Hashem (Hossein Mahjoub), a widowed laborer who lives with his own mother (Salameh Feyzi), decides to remarry and sends Mohammad to a carpentry workshop. Hashem's mother protests and leaves the house, but is forced to return by illness and dies. After his potential fiancée's family responds negatively, Hashem, feeling more alone than ever, goes to find Mohammad and brings him home. On the way, Mohammad falls into a river through a broken bridge; Hashem jumps in to save him and is caught in the current himself. Regaining consciousness, Hashem finds his son lifeless, holds him close, and Mohammad miraculously comes back to life in his father's arms.[1](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/film/%D8%B1%D9%86%DA%AF-%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7/)
American coverage of the release filled in the father's motive: Hashem plans to marry a woman from a strict Islamic family and fears his son will embarrass him, so he schemes to apprentice Mohammad to a sight-impaired carpenter so the boy will at least learn a trade.[2](https://www.deseret.com/2000/7/21/19519189/paradise-a-realistic-dark-story/) At the school in Tehran, Mohammad is the last child waiting for pickup after the other families have come, and his father first tries to persuade the administrators to keep him through the vacation.[6](https://moviearchive.phase9.tv/movies/colorofparadise.shtml) • [8](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-colour-of-paradise)
## Production and cast
Majidi wrote and directed the film, produced through the Varahonar Film Company, with Mohammad Davoudi as cinematographer, Hassan Hassandoost as editor, and music by Alireza Kohan Deyri and Keyvan Jahanshahi.[1](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/film/%D8%B1%D9%86%DA%AF-%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7/) The cast was largely made up of newcomers and non-professional performers; the Deseret News review noted that the cast included "authentic" tradesmen alongside the actors, with the child performer Mohsen Ramezani singled out as the standout.[2](https://www.deseret.com/2000/7/21/19519189/paradise-a-realistic-dark-story/) Majidi cast a blind child actor in the role of Mohammad; a Persian-language survey of disability roles in Iranian cinema argued that a sighted child actor could hardly have played the part as convincingly.[9](https://www.sarkhat.com/fa/news/147503377/)
The film premiered in Iran in the Persian year 1377 (1999) and screened in the 17th Fajr Film Festival, where it won Crystal Simorgh awards for Audience Favorite Film, Best Supporting Actor (Hossein Mahjoub), and Best Sound Recording and Sound Mixing (Mohammadreza Delpak).[10](https://khoobo.com/range-khoda-film/)
## Reception
The film was released in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics in a limited run beginning March 24, 2000, and in the United Kingdom by Optimum Releasing on August 4, 2000.[6](https://moviearchive.phase9.tv/movies/colorofparadise.shtml) Its US gross was $1.8 million.[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/color_of_paradise)
Critical response was strongly positive. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 87% Tomatometer from 31 reviews, with an average rated review score of 7.70/10, and a 96% Popcornmeter audience score from more than 5,000 ratings.[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/color_of_paradise) Metacritic recorded a Metascore of 80 based on 25 critic reviews, with 24 positive and one mixed, and a user score of 8.5.[7](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-color-of-paradise/) Roger Ebert of the [Chicago Sun-Times](https://www.edgepedia.org/chicago-sun-times) gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars, writing that Majidi's films "do not condescend to young audiences" and are therefore absorbing for adults as well.[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/color_of_paradise) The San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Graham called it "a transcendent film, deeply committed and beautifully wrought," and the [Chicago Tribune](https://www.edgepedia.org/chicago-tribune)'s Michael Wilmington observed that "there are no evil characters in the film."[7](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-color-of-paradise/) [The Christian Science Monitor](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-christian-science-monitor)'s David Sterritt offered the main dissent among major outlets, rating it 50 and finding it more sentimental and manipulative than earlier Iranian films on youth-related subjects.[7](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-color-of-paradise/)
## Themes and style
The film is structured as a fable of a child's innocence and a look at faith and humanity, in which the boy's inability to see the world heightens his ability to feel it.[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/color_of_paradise) Time Out's review described the characters' relationship with the divine as "the meat of the matter": the father wonders whether God has deserted him by giving him such a child, while the son feels he has spent his life reaching out for God without finding him.[8](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-colour-of-paradise) The film was shot in the green, forested north of Iran, whose quiet landscapes contrast with the crowded, smoke-filled Tehran streets of the opening scenes.[11](https://wikijoo.ir/index.php/%D8%B1%D9%86%DA%AF_%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7)
Scholarly commentary has placed the film within Majidi's religious aesthetic. Cyrus Ali Zargar, a scholar of Islamic studies at Augustana College in Illinois, analyzed Majidi's *Children of Heaven*, *Baran*, and *The Color of Paradise* as drawing on Sufi and Shia theologies to locate meaning in a world changed by war, modernization, economic disparity, and nationalism, producing an ambiguity aimed at both realism and transcendence.[12](https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol20/iss1/3) A Korean festival program note by the critic Shim Young-seop described the film as "about a painful homecoming of a blind boy" that "gives us the essence of Iranian humanism," noting Majidi's recurring close-ups of hands as the director's way of touching and feeling the pains of the world.[5](http://www.bifan.kr/eng/bifan/history_program_view.asp?pk%5Fseq%3D5049%26sc%5Fcategory1%3D%26sc%5Fyear%3D2001)
## Place in Majidi's career and Iranian cinema
*The Color of Paradise* followed *Children of Heaven* (1997), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and it continued Majidi's focus on children at the center of Iranian post-revolutionary cinema.[13](https://malinanderssonwriting.com/what-do-you-see-director-majid-majidi-on-the-color-of-paradise/) • [14](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/bibliography/bachchahha-yi-asman/) Majidi, born in 1961, had made his first feature *Badook* in 1992; *The Color of Paradise* of 1999 was his fourth work.[5](http://www.bifan.kr/eng/bifan/history_program_view.asp?pk%5Fseq%3D5049%26sc%5Fcategory1%3D%26sc%5Fyear%3D2001) The film won the Grand Prize, Best Director, and Audience Prize at the Valenciennes International Film Festival, among other international awards, and according to the iFilm network it is among Majidi's films that collected the most foreign festival prizes.[15](https://fa2.ifilmtv.ir/Artist/Content/2696) • [16](https://www.ifilmtv.ir/Iran/Content/86789/)
The film belongs to the tradition of child-centered Iranian filmmaking that emerged from the late 1960s, when the Centre for Intellectual Development of Children and Adolescents was founded to make films and publish books, and that became a signature of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema.[17](https://teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/units/2006/1/6/3)
## References
1. [The Color of Paradise | Rang-i khudā | رنگ خدا, Cinema Iranica](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/film/%D8%B1%D9%86%DA%AF-%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7/)
2. ['Paradise' a realistic, dark story, Deseret News (July 21, 2000)](https://www.deseret.com/2000/7/21/19519189/paradise-a-realistic-dark-story/)
3. [The Colour of Paradise, Melbourne International Film Festival archive](https://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/21959/the-colour-of-paradise)
4. [The Color of Paradise, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/color_of_paradise)
5. [The Color of Paradise, BIFAN festival archive (program note by Shim Young-seop)](http://www.bifan.kr/eng/bifan/history_program_view.asp?pk%5Fseq%3D5049%26sc%5Fcategory1%3D%26sc%5Fyear%3D2001)
6. [Color Of Paradise, Phase9 Movie Archive](https://moviearchive.phase9.tv/movies/colorofparadise.shtml)
7. [The Color of Paradise Reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-color-of-paradise/)
8. [The Colour of Paradise 1999 film review, Time Out](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-colour-of-paradise)
9. [رنگهای خدا جام جم - سرخط](https://www.sarkhat.com/fa/news/147503377/)
10. [فیلم رنگ خدا, خوبو](https://khoobo.com/range-khoda-film/)
11. [رنگ خدا, ویکیجو](https://wikijoo.ir/index.php/%D8%B1%D9%86%DA%AF_%D8%AE%D8%AF%D8%A7)
12. [Zargar, Cyrus Ali (2016). "Allegory and Ambiguity in the Films of Majid Majidi: A Theodicy of Meaning," Journal of Religion & Film 20(1)](https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol20/iss1/3)
13. ["What Do You See?": Director Majid Majidi on The Color of Paradise, Malin Andersson](https://malinanderssonwriting.com/what-do-you-see-director-majid-majidi-on-the-color-of-paradise/)
14. [Children of Heaven | Bachchah'hā-yi Āsmān, Cinema Iranica](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/bibliography/bachchahha-yi-asman/)
15. [مجید مجیدی, آی فیلم 2](https://fa2.ifilmtv.ir/Artist/Content/2696)
16. [پخش محبوبترین فیلم مجید مجیدی در آیفیلم](https://www.ifilmtv.ir/Iran/Content/86789/)
17. [Iran: Children of Heaven, Yale National Initiative](https://teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/units/2006/1/6/3)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films late 1990s › Released in 1999*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license