Children of heaven

This is a Iranian film, which directed by Majid Majidi. Without stars or special effects techniques, the film reveals original and simplistic, however, touching people deeply. It tells a story about a brother and sister share a pair of shoes.
Ali, a little boy in the film, went to shoemaker's shop to get his sister shoes which had been repaired. Unfortunately, he lost his sister's shoes when he got some potatoes at the grocery store. Ali's family was poor so that they had to share the only shoes and did not talk to parents. Zahra wore them to school in the morning and returned them to Ali at midday so he could attend afternoon classes. But Ali still was late for classes three times. To their surprise, they found Zahra's lost shoes were worn by a student. The student's father is a blind so that they couldn't get the shoes back. One day, Ali went to the rich suburbs of Tehran with his father to earn money. His father found a job about gardening and got paid later. On their way home, his father injured in a crash because of bake failure which let the plan of buying the shoes for Ali and Zahra to be postponed. Finally, Ali participated a footrace because of the third prize, which rewarded a pair of shoes. But Ali get the NO.1. He and his sister felt so disapointed. At the end of film, a quick shot reveals that their father purchase two pair of shoes for them.

I think the theme of the film is " love between brother and sister ". As the plots in the film, Ali and Zahra shared one shoes in order to avoid being blamed by parents. It was a big adventure for them, however, they did their best to help each other solve this problem. They kept running after classes in order to change each other's shoes in time and do not be late for classes. During footrace, Ali stumbled and fell down, however, he standed up and continued to run regardless of the pain. Zahra's face was kept in his mind. He won the fist price to his surprise, whereas he cried because he couldn't get the reward which was a pair of shoes. What a deep love between them.

The film reflects the gap between the rich and poor in Iran directly. Ali went to Tehran with his father in order to make money. There were a lot of villas and high buildings in Tehran, however, Ali and his family lived in a rough shack. Before the footrace, there were many students in good shoes and sportswear, but Ali worn dirty shoes and ordinary clothes. And Ali looked too thin and weak in comparison with other students. These formed a sharp contrast and touched me deeply.