Children of Heaven (Persian: بچههای آسمان, Bacheha-ye Aseman) is a 1997 Iranian family drama film written and directed by Majid Majidi. It deals with a brother and sister and their adventures over a lost pair of shoes. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1998.
The film starts with Ali (Amir Farrokh Hashemian) fetching his little sister Zahra's (Bahare Seddiqi), pink shoes after a cobbler has repaired them. He leaves them unattended to buy some potatoes. While he is pre-occupied, a homeless man picks up the shoes, hidden in a bag, thinking it was garbage and takes them away. Frantic to find them, the young boy thinking the shoes fell behind the crates knocks over plates of vegetables and is chased away by the grocer.
Ali's family lives in a poor South Tehran neighbourhood, and are having financial trouble, so he fears to tell his parents about the mishap. The landlord argues with Ali's mother (Fereshte Sarabandi) because she is five months behind on the rent, and the grocer has not been paid in a while either. Ali tells Zahra about the shoes and begs her not to tell their mother; she agrees. That night, Ali's father (Reza Naji) scolds him for not helping his ill mother when she asked. While the siblings were doing their homework, they passed notes to each other discussing what to do. They devise a scheme to share Ali's Converse sneakers: Zahra will wear them to school in the morning and return them to Ali at midday so he can attend afternoon classes.
Ali does well on a test and his teacher (Dariush Mokhtari) awards him a gold-colored pen with the others in his class that got good grades; he gives it to Zahra to partially make up for losing her shoes. However, the uncomfortable arrangement between him and his sister leads to Ali being late three times in a row, no matter how hard he runs; the first time the principal ignores him, the second time he gives him a warning, the third time he tells Ali to leave and return with his father who is at work trying to make money. Ali's teacher (Dariush Mokhtari) noticing Ali's tears persuades the principal that Ali is at the top of his class and to give the boy one more chance and let him back into class.
Clasificación [ CM DVD 00801 ] Disponible en DVD, 4 Piso BJB)