'You call these goldfish, you haven't seen the others! It's as though they're dancing when they move their fins.'

Iranian cinema is the expression of purity. Kiarostami writes an angel in human form, a little girl of 5 or perhaps 7. As she descends into our lives, she still stays an angel – the angel of the everyday beauties we are perpetually blind to. She is Innocence but she is never one-dimensional. She is fierce when she protects her brother and smart when she quips back at the soldier playfully taunting her. Iranian cinema is the expression of life. The plot is non-existent, the scene a conversation between the little girl and the soldier. 'You know, my little sister's your…

Here’s your little fish. All pretty and round.


But this one is all skinny. I wanted a chubby one.


You’re looking at it from above. It looks skinny that way. Watch now!
See how big it is? You have to look at it this way. It’s round and pretty, a real beauty. Take it!


(little girl starts smiling)

I chose the above quote on one hand because it is simply beautiful and heart-warming. The exact feeling this film leaves you with. On the other hand, because it also says something about the film itself and how things can be viewed from different perspectives. This film makes great use of symbolism and underlying meanings for images and the script in order…

“it’s as though they’re dancing when they move their fins.”

The White Balloon (1995), the debut film of Jafar Panahi, written by Abbas Kiarostami, carries that very special tone Iranian cinema so often finds, something that blends modern fable and social realism. The stories are simple, even minimalist, and open into something poetic and symbolic while staying rooted in everyday life. Almost nothing happens, and yet everything unfolds.

There’s something almost miraculous about how the film condenses the entire world into the smallest possible quest. Razieh (Aida Mohammadkhani) wants a goldfish, a special kind, and suddenly that desire becomes everything. Panahi locks us into her perspective, a little girl moving through the streets of Tehran with tears hovering in her…

Pure humanist filmmaking distilled down to its most heartwarming and simplistic. Jafar Panahi shows how little you need to make an affecting piece of cinema with The White Balloon. Aided by a fantastic screenplay penned by Kiarostami, it’s no wonder this brilliant film works as well as it does. Abbas Kiarostami’s films are empathy on celluloid, and this is no exception, despite only writing it. This is the first of Panahi’s works I have seen, but I have a feeling that he and Kiarostami share this ability to convey so much through these basic tales of childhood innocence and striking morality.

The balloon itself is a clear representation of purity. Our protagonist—a seven-year-old girl named Razieh—wants a goldfish from the…