A few years ago, I met a middle-aged blind man who had an amazing experience in his life, dealing with blindness and sight. As I was talking to him, I began to ask myself about the difference between perceptions of beauty and serenity in the real world and the world of the blind. I realized, after he talked more about his experience, that, when a man recovers his sight, there is an inevitable conflict between these perceptions. For Yusef, the blind man of my film, serenity comes from his little balcony, the sound of nature and the angelic voices and touches of his family. The beauty is in his mind and ugliness does not exist. He is like Adam in the garden of Paradise, both protected and powerful. I wanted to explore what would happen to his serenity and his sense of control if he was taken out of Paradise.
When Yusef is exposed to the visual world, the beauty he encounters is compelling and frustratingly elusive. Ugliness and strangeness is everywhere. The aggressive presence of the world gradually silences the dialog he had with God and himself. I realized that when a man becomes deaf to his inner dialog and ignore the positive messages the world send him, the only actions he could do would be selfish, violent and destructive. When fate tests us, our life, if not built on firm foundations, often collapses . For Yusef, the tests that life put on him reduced him to the powerlessness of a small God's creature. I still wonder what this child-man would do with the new life he is now begging for....

Majid Majidi (2005)