In a poor Tehran neighborhood, Ali picks up a pair of shoes for his sister Zahra. He loses them while in a store buying potatoes. His father is a simple laborer and his mother is bedridden. He is desperate to hide the mistake from his father and decides to share his sneakers with his sister. The shoes may be small but the stakes do not get much higher. That is the universal truth and that is the greatness of this movie. The family has so little that those shoes mean everything. The kids are terrific. One can really feel their fear and embarrassment. These are big time performances and they have great humanity. The tension in that race does not get much higher. It is all about the stakes and that small prize has such big stakes. There is a parallel with the Bicycle Thieves and I dare say that this approaches that cinematic icon. This was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar but lost to Life Is Beautiful.

CHILDREN OF HEAVEN Majid Majidi Iranian film marked with lot of classics from undisputable craft and theme which organized and conducted by some power packed legends including Abbas Kirostami, Majid Majidi, Asghar Farhadi, Jafer Panahi etc. These legends just show off something simple atmosphere and outlook that engaged with commons. There themes were so close with the ongoing simple aspects of human beings. Basically they are the subjects of things and beings. Their movies will also often open us to the marvelous world of unknown (but common) that we can read in daily press and in the streets. (So far from Bunuel's view about films). As far as, for me Majid Majidi looks astonishing about the depiction of downtrodden concepts and ideas. He just portrayed the basic plot of low class people around the Iranian outskirts. Children of Heaven mesmerized me because of the subtle representation of low class people. It is not about anything which marks calamities and atrocities mainly associate with common people, it's just a simple opening to the world of kids or children. This movie opens up to us two siblings of age around 11 or 12, a brother and a sister. We could understand their family appearance from the initial sequence of the movie when the title cards going on. A person repairs a shoe of a small girl. When we look close and analyze we can find out the shoe gets more damaged and there is no worth to repair it. Going back to home after it gets repaired Ali (the brother) lost the shoe and their turns up the beginning of the movie. Majidi's class can be seen at every course of the movie. He just put the camera to a brother and sister and captured their interactions in a candid way. In the initial part, because of the afraid of his father they both convey the absence of shoe and the consequences associate with them when they do not have a shoe and everything, they just scribbled through the notebook. They can't talk anything about the topic because their father will hear this. So while they are studying they just share their dialogues through writing which is so vast in its context. The audience gets to know more about their complex stage and the problem relate with them and everything through those writings.

Ali has a problem. He has just lost the prized pair of shoes of his sister, Zahra. He tries to find them but to no avail. Now he and Zahra have to share shoes at school, a situation which causes all sorts of problems. Ali comes up with other plans to get Zahra a pair of shoes. Meanwhile, Zahra thinks she may have tracked down the new owner of her shoes.Sweet movie from Iran. The spin-off events from the loss of the shoes and the adventures of the kids are quite entertaining. Also a great, warmth-filled reminder of life's simple pleasures and how things which may seem unimportant to one person in one culture and/or socio- economic sphere can be vitally important to someone with different circumstances.Not particularly profound though. The movie doesn't really come up with much in the way of profundities or even a powerful conclusion (in fact, the conclusion is fairly weak). It's a simple, linear story with very few frills or great twists, told engagingly and with great warmth.The movie was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 1999 Oscars, losing out in the end to Life is Beautiful.

Kudos to the director who marvelously used the spell bound charisma of his direction into he characters of the well written script and did justice to the writer as well. Ali and his sister played seriously award winning role. the emotions are heart touching and worth watching movie. And to all directors and script writers '' heavens of children'' would always remains a challenge and inspiration as well.