Children of Heaven - An Iranian film (1997)

Children of Heaven ( بچه‌های آسمان) is a 1997 Iranian film by Majid Majidi. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1998. It deals with a brother and sister and their adventures over a lost pair of shoes.

Children of Heaven premiered in February 1997 at the Teheran Fajr Film Festival and was awarded several national film awards. It opened in the US on 22 January 1999, with a total US box office total of $930,000.

Critical response to the film was very positive. Some critics compared it

to Vittorio de Sica's 1948 Bicycle Thieves. The few negative voices found fault in a too-simplistic storyline and unanswered questions. Roger Ebert's review in the Chicago Sun-Times called it "very nearly a perfect movie for children" that "lacks the cynicism and smart-mouth attitudes of so much American entertainment for kids and glows with a kind of good-hearted purity".^[1]

In 1998, it became the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, losing to the Italian filmLife Is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni. After the film had become well-known worldwide due to the Oscar nomination, it was shown in several European, South American, and Asian countries between 1999 and 2001. It was successfully shown in numerous film festivals and won awards at the Fajr Film Festival, the World Film Festival, the Newport International Film Festival, the Warsaw International Film Festival, and the Singapore International Film Festival. It was nominated for the Jury's Grand Prize at the American Film Institute's festival.

The film was shot in Tehran. It was attempted to keep the filming secret in order to capture a more realistic image of the city. The production costs have been estimated at US$180,000.

The Plot

Ali fetches his little sister Zahra's pink shoes after the shoemaker has repaired them. Ali puts down the shoes to get some potatoes at the grocer's. While he is preoccupied, a blind garbageman accidentally picks up the shoes, hidden in a bag, and takes them away. Frantic to find them, the young boy knocks over crates of vegetables and is chased away by the grocer.

Ali's family is having financial trouble, so he fears to tell his parents. The landlord argues with Ali's mother because she is five months behind on the rent, and the grocer has not been paid in a while either. Ali tells Zahra about the shoes and begs her not to tell their mother; she agrees. That night, Ali's father scolds him for not helping his ill mother when she asked. While the siblings were doing their homework, they passed notes to each other discussing what to do. They devise a scheme to share Ali's Converse sneakers: Zahra will wear them to school in the morning and return them to Ali at midday so he can attend afternoon classes. This uncomfortable arrangement leads to Ali being late three times in a row, no matter how hard he runs; the first time the principal ignores him, the second time he gives him a warning, the third time he tells Ali to leave and return with his father. Ali's teacher persuades the principal to give the boy one more chance and let him back into class. Ali does well on a test and the teacher awards him a gold-colored pen; he gives it to Zahra to partially make up for losing her shoes.

One day, Zahra notices her missing pink shoes on another student's feet. After class, Zahra secretly follows her home. She later brings Ali with her for a confrontation, but from hiding, they discover that the other girl's father is blind (none other than the garbageman who picked up the shoes by mistake), so they decide to leave. When the other student does well in her studies, her father buys her new purple shoes and throws away Zahra's. Zahra is dismayed when she finds out from her new friend.

Ali's father, anxious to earn more money, borrows some gardening equipment and heads off with Ali to the rich suburbs of Tehran to find some gardening work. They try many places without success, though Ali proves to be a great help to his tongue-tied father. Finally they come upon a mansion in which a six-year-old boy named Alireza lives under the care of his grandfather. While Ali plays with Alireza, his father works. When he is finished, Ali's father is surprised and elated by how generous the grandfather is. On the way home, their bicycle's brakes fail and the father is slightly injured in the resulting crash.

Finally, Ali learns of a high-profile children's footrace involving many schools; the third prize is one week at a vacation camp and a pair of sneakers. To his bitter disappointment, in a hard-fought dash to the finish, he accidentally places first instead. However, there is a quick shot of the children's father's bicycle, showing two new pairs of shoes among his purchases. In the final shot, Ali is shown dipping his blistered feet in a pool. Some versions include an epilogue revealing that Ali eventually achieves success in a racing career.

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