TEHRAN -- Oscar-nominated Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi is making a film on the childhood of Prophet Muhammad (S).

Entitle “Muhammad (S)”, the film’s pre-production began in January of 2010 and worldwide distribution is scheduled for mid-2011.
The film narrates the childhood of Prophet Muhammad (S) up to the age of twelve, well before the advent of his prophecy and targets an international audience of all faiths.
“This thirty plus million dollar production is by far the largest feature film ever produced in Iran”, Majidi mentioned during a press conference on February 26.
“Faith, morality and spirituality are my main concerns in cinema and these values appear in my films in different ways,” he said.
Majidi’s “Children of Heaven” earned Iran’s first Oscar nomination in 1999 and his “The Song of Sparrows” was nominated for a Golden Bear award for best film at the Berlin film festival in 2008. Reza Naji won the festival’s Silver Bear for best actor for his role in the film.
He referred to Prophet Muhammad (S) as the symbol of morality and spirituality and announced that he would try his best to make a film disregarding propaganda and political issues.
Majidi said that the film is an attempt by Iranian cinema to approach the global standard in this cinematic field and expressed his hopes that the project would yield positive results.
There is just one film on the life of Prophet Muhammad (S) which was produced 40 years ago while there are more than 200 films on Jesus Christ (AS) and over 100 films are produced on the life of Prophet Moses (AS).
“Unfortunately there are not comprehensive sources on the childhood of Prophet Muhammad (S) and the available sources contain some repetitive and unauthentic data,” he said.
The historical documents were compiled with the aid of scholars, historians and clerics from various countries including Iran, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, Iraq and Algeria over a period of a year, he mentioned.
The first draft of the screenplay was co-authored by Majidi and Kambuzia Partovi, the writer of the celebrated film “Border Café”.
The film tries to portray the necessity of the advent of a prophet in that era with a depiction of Arab society during the childhood of Prophet Muhammad (S), he said.
The film will be released at least in Persian, Arabic and English and it will be shot in Iran and probably in other countries.
Produced by Mehdi Heidarian, the film project has a process description available on the film’s website at www.infintepc.com.
Photo: Iranian film director Majid Majidi reacts during a press conference marking the conclusion of Vision Beijing, a project of short films by international directors portraying the host city for the 2008 Olympics on Februay 23, 2008 in Beijing. (Photo by Getty Images)