If you're going to the screening of Baran today, don't be alarmed if someone's watching you as you get up to use the bathroom. Chances are that someone is the film's director, Majid Majidi.

Majidi, who premiered his bittersweet coming-of-age romance last night at the Toronto International Film Festival, said that seeing the film with an audience can be an ordeal in itself.

"Each time that someone stands up to go to the toilet, I say, 'Oh God, he doesn't like the film, it's bad!'" he laughed yesterday through his interpreter, Fouad Nahas, who also co-produced the movie. "And when he comes back, I'm so happy."

But Majidi shouldn't be worried about anybody walking out on any of his movies. The 42-year-old filmmaker has been one of Iranian cinema's brightest lights in recent years. His Children Of Heaven was nominated for Best Foreign Film in 1999 -- losing out to Roberto Begnini's Life Is Beautiful -- and took the Montreal World Film Festival's top honour, the Grand Prix des Ameriques, a feat equalled by The Color Of Paradise in 2000 and again this year with Baran, which shared the prize with Abandoned.

This lovely film, screening as part of the Contemporary World Cinema program, tells how an illegal Afghani construction worker in Iran breaks his leg and is replaced by his teenaged son, Rahmat (Zahra Barahmi). At first, a young Iranian worker, Latif (Hossein Abedini), is hostile towards the youngster. But appearances can be very deceiving, and Latif becomes enlightened to the values of love and kindness while coming away with a better understanding of another culture.

With the U.N. High Commission For Refugees estimating more than 1.4 million Afghani refugees live in Iran, the socio-political situation is a hot topic among Iranian filmmakers -- Delbaran is another such film screening at the festival.

Surprisingly, Majidi said he has no problems making the types of films he wants to make, despite the Iranian government's notoriously stringent control over film.

He said since the arrival of President Khatami in 1997, "There has been an incredible improvement in the conditions of work and I believe it's going to be even better in the future for creators to express themselves."

Majidi said he was inspired to make this movie ever since an incident in 1992 when he was shooting his first feature, Baduk.

"Sometimes when we woke up in the morning, we'd see just dead bodies in the road, which were Afghanis desperate to cross the border and were hit by trucks which were running without any lights on because they were probably smugglers," he said. He added that recently, "I became even more aware that these people had no voice, they were just dying on the road and no one was caring about that. So I didn't want to make a documentary, and I didn't want to take a political stand against or for a system, so I chose to tell a story where love sort of cancelled borders."

Baran screens today at 4 p.m. at the Uptown on Yonge just south of Bloor.


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