Montreal: Iranian director Majid Majidi’s The Color of Paradise is this year’s winner of the Grand Prix des Ameriques, top prize in official competition at the 23rd edition of the Montreal World Film Festival. The director is the first to repeat as a top prize winner at wff, picking up the Grand Prix two years ago for Oscar-nominated Children of Heaven. As the festival opened Aug. 27, Majidi’s film did not have distribution in Canada.

The film, previously called The Color of God, is the tale of an eight-year-old blind boy in an isolated mountain village and his lonely dad’s search for a new wife.

The festival’s runner-up Special Jury Prize was shared by Italian director Giuseppe Piccioni for Not of This World and u.s. director Hampton Fancher for the off-kilter thriller The Minus Man.

Louis Belanger won both critical praise and best director award for his feature debut, Post Mortem, produced by Coop de Video de Montreal.

Other wff award highlights include: Spanish director Carlos Saura’s Goya in Bordeaux for best artistic contribution; Nina Hoss for best actress in the German film The Volcano; Japanese talent Ken Takakura for best actor in Poppoya; and French writer/director Pierre Jolivet and cowriter Simon Michael for best screenplay, Ma Petite Entreprise.

Top prize in the official short film competition went to German director Kristen Winter for Just in Time, with Eugene Fedorenko and Rose Newlove winning the second prize for the 13-minute animated fable Village of Idiots out of the National Film Board. The short also won this year’s International Critics Award.

The Air Canada People’s Choice Award as voted by the festival-going public went to Chinese director Huo Jianqi for Postmen in the Mountains. Jean Beaudin’s Souvenirs intimes, popular with the public but mostly panned by critics, won the $25,000 Telefilm Canada Award for best Canadian film.

The Prix de Montreal for best first dramatic feature went to Mexican director Juan Carlos Rulfo for Juan, I Forgot, I Don’t Remember.