Children of Heaven (1997) Warms the Heart and Teaches Compassion

Rating: 8/10 (11 February 2007)

This Iranian film depicts the love a young boy named Ali has for his younger sister named Zahra. Early in the film Ali loses his sister's most prized possession, a pair of shoes, and spends the remainder of the film doing his best to make it up to her. The fact that the family is extremely poor and the feared wrath of the father if he were to find out about the lost shoes add to the tension of the film.
One idea that helped me to appreciate what I have a little more, was the poverty portrayed in the film. The family is very poor. They live in one room apartment and shoes are the most prized possessions the children own. Even though this family is extremely poor, they still find it in themselves to give soup to a nearby family even worse off. Zahra desperately wants to find her missing shoes but when she finds the little girl who has them.... The disparate in living conditions from the poor areas to the big cities and higher class neighborhoods is very vividly pictured. I believe the director was also hoping to provoke a response of compassion in the middle and upper class citizens along with the government in Iran with the reality of poverty in some areas.
The director's use of settings and atmosphere pulled me into the story. The young actors did such a convincing job I could begin to feel the emotions they were portraying on the screen. I would recommend this film for anyone who enjoys foreign film or for anyone who would like to gain a slight bit of insight into middle eastern culture.