Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #267: Sun Children (2020).

 

12-year-old Ali (Ruhoullah Zamani) and his three friends in rural Iran undertake small jobs and petty crimes in order to help their families get by amidst widespread poverty. Their current work is in a mine, where Ali is soon enlisted to locate a secret underground treasure. He agrees, but before he can access the tunnel where the treasure's buried, he and his crew have first to enrol at the nearby Sun School, a charitable institution that seeks to be a school for street kids and child labourers.

Iranian writer-director Majid Majidi's 2020 effort Sun Children is the latest of his films about underprivileged young people and after screening successfully at the Venice International Film Festival (where Zamani won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for an emerging actor or actress), it was the Iranian submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar and made the shortlist of fifteen films. I think it's easy to understand why; this movie achieves the tricky balancing act of exploring the themes of child labour and poverty in a family-friendly manner without actually trivialising or sanitising them, and it also offers quite a bravely critical reminder of how patriarchal Middle Eastern culture is. There's also a moving climactic twist, when we discover what the treasure really is.

Ramin Kousha's score feels somewhat too Westernised, but that was the only flaw I found here, and Majidi's concern for these impoverished young protagonists is thoroughly evident as is his commitment to working a cohesive narrative around their lives, and Zamani is totally charming and convincing as their leader. Wisely, there's nothing flashy about the aesthetics either. Sun Children indeed shines bright. 9/10.