Children of Heaven

Children of Heaven is an Iranian film directed by Majid Majidi. This film follows a young boy and his little sister. The young boy is sent by is mother to go get his sisters shoes from the shoe repairer in this town. On his way back he misplaces the shoes and they were taken by accident by a trash collector. When the boy gets home he doesn't want to tell his parents he lost the shoes because they are too poor to get another pair for any of them. He tells is sister that he will find the shoes but in the mean time they switch shoes throughout the day so she can still go to school. The boy ends up being late to school and getting in trouble because they are switching shoes. While the little girl is at school she sees another little girl wearing her shoes and follows her home. They go to get the shoes back but decide to leave. the boy and his father go to find work in the suburbs gardening and they make some money but get into a bicycle accident on the way home. The boy tells his father that he should use the money to buy his sister some new shoes. Not thinking is father has enough money to get the shoes, he enters a running competition where if he gets third place he will get a new pair of shoes and give them to his sister. He tries so hard to get third place but gets up winning the whole marathon, by that is not what he wanted. The audience gets to see two new pairs of shoes on his fathers bicycle but the boy has no idea he got them new shoes. The film ends with the boy cleaning off his blistered feet in the water feeling defeated because he couldn't get his sister shoes.

The theme of this film is friendship. the bond that the boy and his sister have is a strong one. Even though he lost her shoes, she never told on him even when she had no shoes to go to school with because she didn't want him to get beaten by their father. Throughout the film they all are going through hard time and they live in a poor area but they are still there for each other though the entire film.

I really enjoyed this film because it showed the wonderful relationship they had for each other. There want much going on in the film but you got a real sense of how these people live and  the struggles they go through everyday just to survive. The relationships throughout the film really make you feel for the characters and want them to overcome all of their struggles.