Birthday of the Children of Heaven
On February 1, 1997 in Tehran at the international film festival "Fajr" premiered the film "Bacheha-Ye aseman بچههای آسمان (Children of Heaven)". The director and scriptwriter of the film is Majid Majidi.
It is difficult to name another film, equally successful in all, let’s say, categories: among the audience, and among film critics, and professional filmmakers, and from the point of view of box office.
The film received 13 different film awards worldwide. In particular, in 1997 Majid Majidi's film "Children of Heaven" was awarded the main prize of the International Film Festival in Montreal - "Grand Prix des Amériques". In 1999, the film received the highest rating of the International Film Festival in Warsaw - the Audience Award - and in the same year was nominated for an Oscar as the Best Foreign Language film, and became the first Iranian film in history to be awarded this nomination. The film did not receive this award only because it lost out to the Italian film "La vita è bella (Life is Beautiful)" by Roberto Benigni, which is absolutely understandable.
As for the reviews of film critics, the vast majority are exceptionally enthusiastic, although some caustic notes slip through the reviews of some American film critics. Thus, Janet Maslin, a columnist for the influential New York Times, noted in her review:
"Events in the film are seen through the children's ingenuous eyes, as is so often and artfully the case in Iranian films. (A child's-eye view is, among other things, helpful in circumventing Government censors.) But in the more honest, less manipulative films ... what the young characters observe is liable to be more surprising than it is here. In "Children of Heaven," life is sweet despite countless hardships, and no reality beyond the economic intrudes upon a fairy tale atmosphere...''Children of Heaven'' does provide a kindly, enveloping sense of Iranian life and customs, from the way the family prepares sugar cubes to be served at a mosque to the way Zahra helps care for elderly neighbors. These moments come more easily to Mr. Majidi than his studiously bittersweet ending for what is, despite its surface bleakness, an essentially sunny story."
As usual, the guru of American film criticism Roger Ebert gave the most capacious rating, who rated the film with the maximum 4 stars in his rating system:
"Children of Heaven" is very nearly a perfect movie for children, and of course that means adults will like it, too. It lacks the cynicism and smart-mouth attitudes of so much American entertainment for kids and glows with a kind of good-hearted purity. To see this movie is to be reminded of a time when the children in movies were children and not miniature stand-up comics.... "Children of Heaven'' is about a home without unhappiness. About a brother and sister who love one another, instead of fighting. About situations any child can identify with. In this film from Iran, I found a sweetness and innocence that shames the land of Mutant Turtles, Power Rangers and violent video games."
It is curious, but the comparison of Majid Majidi's film with the production of "home" cinema can be traced in the review of the popular Russian film blogger Andrey Malov:
""Children of Heaven" is another gem in the oriental necklace called "Iranian cinema." Majid Majidi's lyrical drama is not only a unique evidence of the life of ordinary people in an "unpopular" country, but also another aesthetic phenomenon that strengthens the status of national art .... Unlike the new Russia, cinema for children in this not the richest Asian state is generously subsidized, just as it used to be was made in the Soviet Union, while state sponsorship frees local craftsmen from having to take care of the fees and focus on the tastes of not the most demanding public."
In terms of audience success, 74% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world gave the film a score of 8 to 10, and 24% of users gave the film a perfect score of 10. The financial results of the film are also impressive: the film's box office is more than 9 times exceeded its budget of 180 thousand dollars.
Taking into account all the above indicators and characteristics, the film rating of Majid Majidi's "Children of Heaven" according to FilmGourmand was 8,769, which allowed it to take 220th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
