Director: Majid Majidi
This is perhaps the best movie I’ve ever seen so far. This movie is for those true cinema lovers who’d appreciate a good movie. What a brilliant performances by the lead child actors! It touched my heart directly. The director knows how to portray a simple story into a big canvas with every ounce of emotions touching you somewhere.
This is an Iranian movie about a boy (Ali) who loses his sister's (Zahra) only pair of shoes. Heartbroken at the loss of her shoes, Zahra sheds honest tears and worries about what she can wear to school the next day. The two siblings share Ali's tennis shoes since they attend school in separate shifts, setting up natural dramatic device for the narrative.
The most surprising part in watching this movie is that I watched it in the original format without any subtitles. I desperately wanted to know the dialogues. But as the movie progressed I realized it needed no words to make me understand what the kids were saying. I was awestruck all the while watching the movie. And moreover, the language was very pleasant to hear—the way the kids were speaking.
The brother-sister relationship was shown in a very sweet way. The children's sincerity and warmth shine through brilliantly, and they come across as kids, instead of kids-acting-like-grandparents; and had me thoroughly convinced that their characters would go on existing after the camera stopped rolling.
In 1998, it was the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but lost to the Italian film Life Is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni.
The version of this movie which frequently airs on Star Movies has this horrible emotionless dubbing artists and that has spoiled the important essence of the movie. I would highly recommend the original version with or without subtitles. This way you can actually connect to the emotions of the kids.
