The Iranian cinema in recent times have come up with some poignant tales of love, sacrifice, filial bondage and all showing children as protagonists. One of the most important movie-maker in this respect is Majid Majidi. Majidi's Colors of Paradise, or Children of Heaven or in fact Baran or Songs of Sparrows all have children as the protagonists. This sort of creative biverts are often chosen by Iranian film-makers who cannot show openly man-woman relationships or other overtly political views through the films. Hence children are chosen to present things in the garb of innocence.
Bahman Ghobadi from Kurdishtan and being a Kurdish fim-maker is no different from Majidi or Panahi who hail from Iran. However, Bahman's movies it seems choose children not to hide the crudeness of reality but to create the pathos in a more severe manner. It seems it is his way of catharsis for purifying the souls through taking a through scenes of devastatingly ugly refugee camps, torments of war lived and experienced by beautifully innocent children. Ghobadi tries to put forth the saga of the sufferings of his Kurdish people and to show how they still live on, thanks to their sheer courage and optimism.
Turtles Can fly showed that through the industrious and optimistic Satellite leading a troupe of orphaned Kurdish boys, amidst the village lands dotted with landmines and the valleys howling with the pains and sufferings of innocent adolescent girls. In the time for Drunken Horses, things are more difficult. A group of orphaned children make a living by smuggling goods across the Iran Iraq border. Ayoub hardly 12 or 13 having lost his father in a mine explosion, is compelled to take responsibility of his brothers and sisters, one being crippled and sick. Madi the deformed brother is seriously ill and needs and operation almost unaffordable for this family. However Ayoub and the other children almost take it up as a project to save Madi. Ayoub coaxes a local tradesman to be allowed to accompany his troupe with his uncle's donkey amidst the snow capped rugged lands. Its winter and even the horses are fed alcohol to keep them moving in the snow. Also are the apprehended dangers of blizzards and ambushes. However Ayoub is unrelented. He remains undaunted by these hardships to provide for his family. It seems that saving crippled Madi is not a choice for these children. Intense sufferings due to poverty has not wiped out the filial affection out of these children. Options to earn a living are too little. In one of the journeys to the border, Ayoub learns from a boy of his age, that he has large areas of farmlands all with landmines-too many to get rid off. The geographies of a better land are closed to them. The children still pawn their lives for each other. Razin, the elder daughter of the family, agrees to a marriage, only at the condition, that the groom would pay for Madi's operation. Later Ayoub risks everything to get Madi across the border.
Unlike the White Ballon, or Colors of paradise or Children of Heaven (where indeed the children are in trouble)Ghobadi's children are in the grip of terrifying emotions: connected not with their dead parents, or the unutterable grimness of their lives - burdens they carry with heartbreaking stoicism, but but rather with the immediate problem of raising enough money for an operation for their disabled brother, Madi, an issue which is more critical-this is not about losing 500 tomans for a goldfish (Panahi's White Balloon)or a pair of sneakers to wear to school (Children of Heaven) or 1000 goldfishes to be bred (Song of Sparrows)
However it is in this respect they are equally similar. The burden of poverty does not for a moment ever let these children lose focus of their goal. Neither they lose love for each other. In fact it is the love for their families that keep them moving. In Children of Heaven, Ali runs the race to win a pair of sneakers for Zara. We could see the desparation, when he runs to death to come "third". Similarly Ayoub risks his life to reach and cross the border to save Madi. Ghobadi through his children always speak of the courage of his Kurdish folks, who inspite of the oppression of its dicators (remember genocide and gas tragedy at Halabcheh), onslaughts of war, still live on with hopes.
However to me these children of Iran ( be it Majidi's, Ghobadi's, Makhmalbaf's) all show the stoic and unrelented resolve and optimism of the Iranian directors and thinkers who have deep faith and love in their culture, to show Western audiences a different and richer image of his homeland as opposed the stereotypical portrayals of Iran by western media.
The children cast in their simple rural natural landscapes of Iran, playing amidst the turquiose blue ponds with orange goldfishes seem to carry on the message to the world about a land shunned and mis-trusted by the west. They tell the story of Iran with loving fathers and brothers and men with deep filial love to give audiences a view of Iran different from its common portrayal in U.S. media as an ideological foe hell-bent on acquiring a nuclear arsenal.
In bringing Iran to the arena of world cinema, it seems all these children are committed equally.
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