Children of Heaven Review

Nine-year-old Ali loses his little sister Zahra's newly mended shoes on an errand, and since their parents cannot afford another pair and must not find out, the children share his. Zahra wears them to morning school and runs them home at midday; Ali sprints to afternoon classes in them and is late, again, under the headmaster's eye. Majid Majidi builds nearly the whole film out of those handoffs, and they play like a relay race with the stakes of a heist.

Majidi shot on Tehran's streets and tried to keep the filming secret, so the alleys and bazaars look lived in rather than dressed. Amir Farrokh Hashemian and Bahare Seddiqi are extraordinary, all silent bargaining and guilty glances, and the film declines villains at every turn: when Zahra spots her shoes on another girl's feet, she follows her home and finds that the girl's father is blind. The climax is a children's race in which Ali needs to finish third, because third prize is a pair of sneakers.

It became the first Iranian film nominated for the foreign language Oscar, losing to Life Is Beautiful, and Roger Ebert called it very nearly a perfect movie for children. The father's gardening trip to the wealthy districts is a detour, and the sweetness is sometimes pressed a little hard.