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Bacheha-ye-Aseman (Children of heaven)

Cast: Amir Farokh Hashemian (Ali), Bahare Siddique (Zahara)

Release date: January 1999

Ali and Zahara are brother and sister. They live with their parents in a poor neighborhood of Tehran. Their mother is sick and their father works as a gardener. He is overworked and does odd jobs for little pay. One day, Ali takes Zahara’s shoes to the market for getting them fixed. But on the way back, while buying groceries from a shop, he loses the shoes.

When he reaches back home, he confides in Zahara about the loss. He is terribly upset. They are aware of the financial difficulties being faced by their family. They don’t want to tell their parents as they know that father wont be able to afford a new pair of shoes anyway. They hatch a plan, passing notes while doing homework in the one room house they stay in. From there on, the adventure begins.

Zahara wears Ali’s shoes to school in the morning. After she comes back, Ali takes the shoes in the alley and runs off to his school in the evening. But little problems arise. Zahara keeps getting late due to some reason or the other and Ali, is late at school. He is known as a good student and his teachers are exasperated by his regular latecoming.

Then Ali finds out about a race for schoolchildren and decides to participate. The winner’s prize is a bicycle. He doesn’t want to win the race. He just wants to get the third place, the prize for which is a pair of sneakers. He trains hard and then the D-day arrives…

Ali and Zahara might be from a poor family but it is a happy family. They care and stand up for each other and they are loved by their parents.

Zahara sees her shoes on a girl’s feet in school. She is the local ragpicker’s daughter. At first she is sad and angry. She follows her around and they end up becoming friends. This and other similar moments add to the sweetness of the tale. But it avoids the gooey saccharine mush found in Hollywood movies.

It is a deceptively simple and earnest story, almost like a fable. It is engaging in its sincerity. Roger Ebert called it a perfect kids’ movie. And not for no reason. A good children’s movie doesn’t condescend or look down upon them. It treats them as individuals with intelligence, feelings and spirit. It understands their ‘little’ dilemmas and recognizes their ingeniousness. And when it does all this successfully, it becomes more than just a children’s movie, charming its way into the dry, skeptical hearts of adults too and teaching them a lesson or two.