Children of Heaven

Before A Separation broke through at the Oscars, Children of Heaven was Iran's first-ever Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. It is hard to imagine a more perfect introduction to Iranian cinema for international audiences: gentle, humane, and built around a premise so simple it feels like a fable.

Ali (Amir Farrokh Hashemian) loses his sister Zahra's only pair of shoes while running errands. Their family is too poor to replace them, and their father too proud to ask for help. So the siblings devise a system: Zahra wears Ali's sneakers to school in the morning, then races home at midday so Ali can wear them to his afternoon session.

The film's centerpiece is a children's footrace. Ali doesn't want to win; he wants third place, because third prize is a pair of sneakers. The sequence is an almost unbearable blend of suspense and heartbreak. When Ali accidentally comes in first, his tears at the podium are not of joy but of failure. Children of Heaven understands something essential: for the poor, winning is often losing.