TEHRAN – Five films from Iran are present at the 12th Kolkata International Children’s Film Festival, which is underway in India.

This year’s edition of the festival has selected two films from the recent productions of Iranian cinema as well as three renowned films from the 80s and 90s, IRNA reported.

“Bamboolak” directed by Arash Moayerian and “Robot Girl” by Hossein Ghanaat are both productions of 2024.

In “Bamboolak,” grandpa Bambala Khan lives happily with Bamboolak and Nanah, his grandson and granddaughter. Nanah dreams of having another sister or brother. Bamboolak sets out to make her wish come true. But his main obstacle becomes the tricky Sheytoonak. 

The musical movie is a heartwarming picture filled with laughter, fun, and adventure.

“Robot Girl” is centered around the character of Hilda, a female robot, who is mistakenly sent from the factory to Raheleh’s house, where she is forced to do things she wasn't planned for.

Hilda's presence in the lives of the family members becomes an excuse to narrate themes such as love, empathy, responsibility, trust, and communication between family members in an engaging and understandable format for children and teenagers.

The other three Iranian films in the festival by globally renowned filmmakers include “Children of Heaven” and “The Color of Paradise”, both by Majid Majidi and “Where Is the Friend’s House?” by Abbas Kiarostami.

Made in 1997, “Children of Heaven” tells the story of little Ali, who accidentally loses his sister Zahra’s only pair of shoes. This sets off a secret, high-stakes adventure between the two siblings. Sharing a single pair of worn-out sneakers, they embark on a breathless relay through the narrow alleys of Tehran. The siblings have to race against the clock to reach school on time. 

As Ali enters a race, will he be able to win a brand-new pair of shoes for his sister? This gripping tale resonates with audiences of all ages.

Written and directed by Majid Majidi, the family drama received highly positive reviews and became the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, losing to the Italian film “Life Is Beautiful” by Roberto Benigni.

After the film had become well known worldwide due to the Oscar nomination, it was shown in several European, South American, and Asian countries between 1999 and 2001. It was successfully shown in numerous film festivals and won awards at the Fajr Film Festival, the World Film Festival, the Newport International Film Festival, the Warsaw International Film Festival, and the Singapore International Film Festival.

In “The Color of Paradise,” a 1999 production, Mohammad (performed by Mohsen Ramezani) is a blind boy with an extraordinary gift for reading the whispers of nature. Through his hands, the world becomes a symphony of textures and secrets. He is reluctantly collected from his boarding school by his father and taken back to the family homestead, a farm nestling in idyllic countryside, depicted by Majidi with such a benign eye.

This luminous Iranian masterpiece is an amazing journey that explores a child's pure search for God and the universal longing for acceptance and love.

The film explores blindness not only as a state, but as a metaphorical inability to see or understand others. The sightless Mohammed is extraordinarily receptive to all the non-visual messages that nature sends him. The audience can easily enter his world, experiencing his joys and pains, his delight in nature, his love for his grandmother, and his wish to be treated like a normal member of the community. 

The performances Majidi elicits from his cast of non-professional actors are truly remarkable. Filmed in beautiful meadows and mountains, full of wildflowers and wheat, this is a visually magnificent and heart-wrenching movie.

Majidi employs imaginative touches to tell his story: the soundtrack, for example, is tweaked to emphasize Mohammed's auditory acuteness. Ramezani is exceptional in his role as the bewildered child who cannot always keep deep misery at bay; a couple of scenes in particular will reduce even the most hardened viewer to sniveling empathy. 

“Where Is the Friend’s House?” was produced in 1987. When young Ahmad accidentally takes his classmate’s notebook, he realizes his friend faces expulsion. Driven by a pure sense of duty, Ahmad embarks on a soul-stirring quest through the winding paths of rural Iran. 

Kiarostami’s minimalist masterpiece is a profound, visually stunning tribute to childhood integrity and the quiet heroism found in a simple act of friendship.

The film, whose title derives from a poem by Sohrab Sepehri, is the first installment in Kiarostami's Koker trilogy, followed by “And Life Goes On” and “Through the Olive Trees,” all of which take place in the northern Iranian village of Koker.

Poised delicately between fiction and documentary, comedy and tragedy, the lyrical fables in The Koker trilogy exemplify both the gentle humanism and the playful sleight of hand that define the director’s sensibility. With each successive film, Kiarostami takes the audience deeper into the behind-the-scenes reality of the film that preceded it, heightening the viewers’ understanding of the complex network of human relationships that sustain both a movie set and a village. The result is a gradual outward zoom that reveals the cosmic majesty and mystery of ordinary life.

“Where Is the Friend's House?” was Kiarostami's first film to gain major international attention. It won the Bronze Leopard at the 1989 Locarno Film Festival and the Golden Plate at the Fajr Film Festival. The film is on the British Film Institute's list of 50 films to see by age 15.

Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016) was a creative photographer, poet, screenwriter, graphic designer, painter, illustrator, and filmmaker, making him one of the key figures of the Iranian New Wave movement. “Where is the Friend’s House” is an insightful, inspiring, empathetic portrait of childhood, where Kiarostami vividly expresses the weight and tension of everyday struggle. The film also illustrates his signature landscape cinematography and the beauty of the Koker region.

Launched on January 23, the Kolkata International Children’s Film Festival will wrap up on January 29. The week-long screens 180 films from 32 countries. Just like the Kolkata International Film Festival, this children’s film festival also has sections for sports films, shorts, and documentaries. As many as 40 films made by children on mobiles in workshops are also screened. 

SS/SAB