The White Balloon

1995 [PERSIAN]

Action / Drama / Family

Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 83% · 24 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 88% · 1K ratings
IMDb Rating 7.6/10 10 8927 8.9K

fish money celebration goldfish

Director

Jafar Panahi Photo
Jafar Panahi

Top cast

Shaker Hayely Photo
Shaker Hayely as Tailor's Assistant
Hasan Neamatolahi Photo
Hasan Neamatolahi as Snake Charmer
Hosain Kazemy Photo
Hosain Kazemy as Shop Owner
Homayoon Rokani Photo
Homayoon Rokani as Street Singer

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by cinephiliac 8 / 10

Acute reproach of a unfriendly modern society

Reviewed by zetes 9 / 10

Excellent

Abbas Kiarostami wrote this film, which is very much like his 1987 masterpiece, Where Is the Friend's Home? That film had a young boy trying to give back some other boy's homework that he accidentally took home. This one has a little girl having all kinds of problems trying to buy a goldfish on New Year's Eve. Each of these children have to navigate their way through a world of adults in a culture where the young are to be seen, but not heard. The earlier film is quite a bit better than The White Balloon, but this is a wonderful film in its own right. It has a wonderful set piece where a street performer thinks that the girl is donating the money she has for her goldfish to a snake charmer. She has to work up the courage to speak up for herself, and then to take the money when it has been wrapped around a snake. My only real problem with the film was the lead performance, by Aida Mohammadkhani. She has really nice facial expressions, but her voice and line delivery are monotonous; truth be told, she gets kind of obnoxious after a while. Mohsen Kalifi, who plays her older brother, is wonderful, on the other hand. I really liked the way the sibling relationship was developed. Kiarostami, genius that he is, adds some small details that give the film a much deeper resonance than one might find at first glance (I'd almost call this a trademark of his). The sequence with the titular balloon, along with the haunting final shot, is the kind of thing that could make this film last forever inside of me.
Reviewed by ackstasis 8 / 10

Strangers

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