Movie Review — “Children of Heaven” (1997)

From our complicated plot of our last review, let’s talk about a beautiful movie revolving around sibling love.

“Children of Heaven” is an Iranian movie from director Majid Majidi & was released approx. 24 years ago but still has the same charm if you get an opportunity to watch it today. As always, I recommend watching such movies in their original native language with subtitles in the language which you can understand.

Ali and his sister Zahra are siblings who live in a poor neighborhood of south Tehran and is struggling financially to make ends meet. When Ali looses Zahra’s shoes while picking it up from a cobbler, he is very afraid to let his family know about it. Zahra and Ali promise to share Ali’s shoes in such a way that Zahra will wear them to school in the morning and return them to Ali at midday so he can attend his afternoon classes. To compensate this issue, Ali gives Zahra a new pen which was awarded to him by his teacher by being an outstanding student in one test. This arrangement leads to Ali being late to school 3 times despite running very hard in between Tehran’s narrow pathways. Zahra notices that her friend Roya has the exact same shoes which Ali had lost but doesn’t say anything about it. She is however disappointed later on, when she learns that Roya got a new pair of shoes by acing a test in school whereas she still has nothing. Ali learns about a 4 km children’s race where the third prize is one week at a vacation camp and a pair of sneakers. Ali promises Zahra that he will finish 3rd and give her new sneakers. When the race is at it’s climax, Ali has flashbacks of how hard things were between him & Zahra for sharing those shoes and in a surprising twist ends up winning the race. Everyone is overjoyed with Ali winning the race whereas he is crying that he never got to win sneakers for Zahra. In the end Ali was about to tell Zahra that he didn’t win the sneakers but Zahra is called inside by her mother to help her out. So Ali goes to a nearby pool to dip his bare blistered feet and he notices that his own sneakers are torn out due to the race. Whereas Ali’s father is shown to have brought 2 pairs of sneakers, white & pink one after doing a gardening job in an elite part of the city.

Be ready to have an emotional roller coaster ride with this simple yet heart touching movie.

Verdict: 9/10 and a “WATCH” recommendation to enjoy this movie. Watch it online here → https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Children-of-Heaven/0GI0T36T36WLDCNRN9MRLJLK09 https://www.miramax.com/movie/children-of-heaven/ Or any other means by which you can get your hands on this movie.