Children of Heaven
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| Children of Heaven | |
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 DVD cover |
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| Directed by | Majid Majidi |
| Produced by | Amir Esfandiari, Mohammad Esfandiari |
| Written by | Majid Majidi |
| Starring | Amir Farrokh Hashemian, Bahare Seddiqi |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films (USA) |
| Release date(s) | January 22, 1999 (USA) |
| Running time | 89 min. |
| Language | Persian |
| IMDb profile | |
Children of Heaven is a 1997 Iranian film. 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, while also touching upon the more serious subject of the political situation in Iran as well as class differences between the rich and the poor and daily urban life.
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[edit] Synopsis
Ali takes his little sister Zahra's shoes to the shoemaker to be repaired, but loses them on the way home. The siblings decide to keep the predicament a secret from their parents, knowing that there is no money to buy a replacement pair and fearing that they will be punished. They devise a scheme to share Ali's sneakers: Zahra will wear them to school in the morning and hand them off to Ali at midday so he can attend afternoon classes. This uncomfortable arrangement leads to one adventure after another as they attempt to hide the plan from their parents and teachers, attend to their schoolwork and errands, and acquire a new pair of shoes for Zahra.
Ali enters a high-profile children's footrace in hopes of receiving the third prize of a new pair of sneakers. He accidentally places first and wins another prize instead. The film ends with Zahra finding out that she will not get a new pair of shoes, but an epilogue explains that Ali eventually achieves the larger-scale success of having a racing career. However a quick shot of their father's bicycle at the end of the movie shows what appears to be the pink shoes Zahra had been focusing on earlier, implying she got the shoes after all.
[edit] Background and critical response
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.
Children of Heaven premiered in February of 1997 at the Teheran Fajr Film Festival and was awarded several national film awards. It started in the US on 22 January 1999, with a total US box office result of $930,000. 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.
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 in the movie. Roger Ebert's review in the Chicago Sun-Times called it "very nearly a perfect movie for children", without the cynicism prevalent in American children's movies.[1]
[edit] Awards
In 1998, the film was the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but lost to the Italian film Life Is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni.
It was successfully shown on 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.
[edit] Trivia
- In the English DVD version of the film, the epilogue is not translated.
[edit] Homerun
Homerun, a 2003 Singaporean film by Jack Neo, is an adaptation of Children of Heaven. Unlike Children of Heaven, Homerun's theme is friendship and the film is set in Singapore in 1965. Homerun received two nominations at the 2003 Golden Horse Awards, for Best Theme Song (拥有) and Best New Performer (Megan Zheng). Megan Zheng, then 10 years old, became the first Singaporean to win a Golden Horse Award, sharing her Best New Performer award with Wang Baoqiang, who plays a miner in Blind Shaft.
[edit] References
This article incorporates text translated from the corresponding German Wikipedia article as of 2006-09-16.
- ^ Roger Ebert Review of Children of Heaven Chicago Sun-Times
[edit] External links
 Cinema of Iran |
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Actors • Directors • Films A-Z • Chronology of films • Cinematographers • Iranian New Wave • Producers • Screenwriters • |
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