The White Balloon Poster

The White Balloon (1995)

Drama  
Rayting:   7.8/10 6.8K votes
Country: Iran
Language: Persian
Release date: 2 May 1996

Several people try to help a little girl to find the money her mom gave her to buy a goldfish with.

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KFL 25 July 2001

The White Balloon has much in common with another Iranian movie about children, "Children of Heaven". In both, the children find themselves in a bind, and use their ingenuity to work out a solution of sorts. Overall, The White Balloon is somewhat slower, perhaps requires more patience on the viewer's part, but it may be more realistic about current-day Tehran and its residents. Children of Heaven has a bit more action and suspense, and might be a better choice for the typical Western moviegoer.

Both movies, however, feature excellent acting by the children, some heartbreaking scenes, some minor triumphs, and an intriguing glimpse of life in a truly foreign culture. Both might be called "artless" in the best sense of the word.

7/10 (vs. 8/10 for Children of Heaven)

Penguin-7 9 September 1998

Fmovies: I recently viewed this movie on Bravo TV and was absolutely spellbound. At first, the Farsi language threw me, but it was delightful after awhile in a melodic sort of way. Plus, the lead character is adorable. Her traumatic experience in buying the goldfish is heartrending and at the same time is enlightening. You will want to turn away for fear that she will not succeed and yet you watch because you know that she will. The movie also helps you to regain a faith in the common goodness of the human race.

Yahdancy 21 May 2006

I just finished watching this delightful movie about a five-year old Iranian girl who is given money to buy a goldfish but loses it. The film, innocent yet interesting and enthralling takes the viewer along on her journey to find the money so that she can get her fish. She encounters many people along the way, all who try to help her to get back the money. There are many underlying themes throughout the movie as well, but above all, we learn to help each other and see each other as more than just strangers. Also, the plot summary given about this film is misleading and downright false. No one tries to take advantage of this little girl at all!

bob the moo 23 November 2001

The White Balloon fmovies. Young Razieh (Aida Mohammadkhani) needs to buy a goldfish to celebrate the New Year in Iran. Her mother (Fereshteh Sadr Orfani) gives her the money and she sets out to buy said fish. Along the way she continually loses the money and must rely on the kindness of strangers to help her.

This is a very slight film. It's plot is wafer thin in terms of traditional narrative, it may well frustrate many viewers with it's gentling strolling style. However it is quite funny on the surface. The many people who come and go during Razieh's journey are amusing - from the tailor berating a customer for having a small face causing his shirts to not look correctly tailored to the antics of the honest snake charmers. It's not a laugh out loud type of film but it does have a gentle humour throughout that is fun if you are in the mood for it.

In fact you really need to be in the mood for the whole thing - if you're lacking patience then you'll probably not last out this film but if you're willing to stick with it then you may be pleasantly surprised by the whole thing. The story doesn't grip you, but the humour helps to divert attention from this. In fact the guts of this film seems to be a message on the nature of society.

Throughout the film Razieh finds herself relying on the kindness or honesty of strangers to help her get her money. The towards the end one of the characters (a soldier played by Mohammad Shaani) talks to Razieh about his sisters and about what he has in common with her. He then defends himself when Ali (Mohsen Kalifi) attacks his sister for talking with strangers. This is closely followed by a short scene where all the characters that had interacted with Razieh cross the screen at the same time without really acknowledging each other. The message here is clear - that society is a lot closer knit than we think and it's only times of trouble where we turn to others. Instead we should develop the relationships with strangers that we easily could.

However this message is not delivered until the end of the film and it's only then that you understand what you've been watching. However the gentle comedy of the strangers make it easy to follow the film till this conclusion. Unlike other reviewers I don't think Mohammadkani was that good - she did come across as a very weepy brat and it was hard to sympathise with the problems that are all her own fault. However the other roles are good, Kalifi is the best child actor as Razieh and the other characters seem natural and forced (although Shahani's soldier is a bit preachy).

Overall a gently amusing film that is light on plot, but delivers it's simple message intelligently without forcing it down your throat.

fnbrill 16 December 2002

Most of the respondents have reviewed "White Balloon" as an art film. I would like to advocate its a great kids' movie. My kids (9 and 10) watched it entranced. To them its a movie about a real life situation that any kid could get into. It never patronizes children but treats them as the center of the film with their own lives and needs.

Something else which escapes the other reviewers is the filming is all done from a child's level.

zetes 30 May 2003

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.

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