School's out for summer, so eight-year-old blind boy Mohammad (Mohsen Ramezani) travels with his widower father (Hosein Mahjoob) to the family home in ♊the mountains. He's unconditionally loved by his granny (Salameh Feyzi) and two sisters, but dad thinks Mohammad's disability is an obstacle in his own plans to remarry.

Majidi's follow-up tꦚo the Oscar-nominated Children Of Heaven is a beautiful work that plays ideas of visual and spiritual blindness against each other without becoming over-complicated. Although the film builds towards an intensely moving climax, it never uses young Mohammad's plight for quick and easy sentimentality. Instead, his finely-tuned senses 🃏of touch and hearing afford him a joyful appreciation of the world around him, and the seeing audience come to believe their perceptions are dull by comparison.

With its emotional power, unaffected acting and deceptively simple sto🌠ryline, The Colour Of Paradise is up there with Bicycle Thieves as an instantly accessible foreign-language masterpiece.