The Iranian film ‘Children of Heaven’ was screened here on Wednesday. The film was screened marking the first day of Iranian Film Festival being organised at Bharat Bhavan.
‘Children of Heaven’ is a 1997 Iranian family drama film written and directed by Majid Majidi. It deals with a brother and sister and their adventures over a lost pair of shoes.
The film starts with Ali fetching his little sister Zahra's pink shoes after a cobbler has repaired them. He leaves them unattended to buy some potatoes. While he is pre-occupied, a homeless man picks up the shoes, hidden in a bag, thinking it was garbage and takes them away. Frantic to find them, the young boy thinking the shoes fell behind the crates knocks over plates of vegetables and is chased away by the grocer.
Ali's family lives in a poor South Tehran neighbourhood and is having financial trouble, so he fears to tell his parents about the mishap.
One day, Zahra notices her missing pink shoes on another student, Roya's, feet. After class, Zahra secretly follows Roya home. She later brings Ali with her for a confrontation, but from hiding, they discover that Roya's father, the garbageman, is blind, so they decide to leave.
Finally, Ali learns of a high-profile children's 4 kilometer footrace involving many schools; the third prize is one week at a vacation camp and a pair of sneakers. Ali sees this as his chance to earn a new pair of shoes for Zahra. To his bitter disappointment, in a hard-fought dash to the finish, he accidentally places first instead.
It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign language Film in 1998.