The White Balloon

Screening on Film

Directed by Jafar Panahi.
With Aida Mohammadkhani, Moshen Kafili, Fereshteh Sadr Orfani.
Iran, 1995, 35mm, color, 85 min.
Farsi with English subtitles.

With characteristic affection for his subjects, Panahi uses his camera in the film’s opening shots to examine the inhabitants of a Tehran marketplace. The camera settles on a woman, whose seven-year-old daughter Razieh soon demands money to buy a new goldfish. The film then takes Razieh as its subject as she departs for the store, loses the money and her direction, and wanders the city streets. The fable-like aspects of the story are tempered by an underlying critique of Razieh’s greed and, by extension, of the selfishness of consumerism in general. From a script by Abbas Kiarostami, Panahi’s debut film shows why its director has become one of the most admired figures in world cinema today.