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Iran, 1997, 89 Minute Running Time Program: Contemporary World Cinema
DIRECTOR: Majid Majidi Producer: Amir Esfandiari, Mohammad EsfandiariEditor: Hassan HassandoostScreenwriter: Majid MajidiCinematographer: Parviz MalekzaadePrincipal Cast: Mohammad Amir Naji, Amir Farrokh Hashemian, Bahare Seddiqi, Nafise Jafar-Mohammadi
On the way home from a cobbler’s shop in his poor, urban Iranian neighborhood, nine-year-old Ali stops to buy some potatoes. While he’s sorting through the bins, a rag picker takes off with his little sister Zahra’s old shoes. She’s in tears when he shows up empty-handed. What will she wear to school? And what will they tell their parents? Ali has a solution. Zahra will go to school in the morning; he will attend in the afternoon. They can share a pair of sneakers. Unfortunately, the timing of their swap is off, and Ali arrives late to his first class. But wait—there’s yet another solution: Ali learns about an upcoming foot race at which the runner who places third will receive a new pair of shoes. All Ali has to do is beat out several hundred children while losing to exactly two others, and his sister will be happy. Until then, he only needs to accompany his father on a trip to the city’s wealthy section in search of gardening work—work that might pay enough to give the whole family a little extra wiggle room. Though shot on location in Tehran, director Majid Majidi managed to keep the production of Children of Heaven under sufficient wraps to capture a realistic view of the city. Estimated to have cost less than $200,000 to make, it went on to earn almost five times that in the United States alone; and following its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, it screened worldwide between 1999 and 2001.