Majidi, who presides over the jury of the official competition of this year’s Kerala Festival, received his award on December 7.
In his films, Majidi has touched on many themes and genres and has won numerous international awards.
During his 25-year activity in filmmaking he made films such as Children of Heaven (1997), The Colour of Paradise (1999) and The Song of Sparrows (2008) which all won global acclaim.
The Children of Heaven was nominated to receive the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1998. Though it lost to the Italian film Life Is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni, Children of Heaven is the first Iranian film to have been nominated by the Academy.
The 23rd International Film Festival of Kerala was inaugurated on December 7 and will conclude on December 13.
At the opening ceremony, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s latest work, Everybody Knows, was also screened.
The seven-day festival will feature 190 films from 65 countries.
The theme of the festival this year is “The Human Spirit: Films on Hope and Rebuilding”. Six films will be screened under this particular category.
