The first thing that stands out in this documentary by Abbas Kiarostami is the innocent faces and bright eyes of the children he meets and interviews (all boys) on the street. The emotion is immediate, not only because these joyful, curious, and intelligent children have a contagious liveliness, but also because they instantly remind us of other children, elsewhere, in other schools close to us and far away, who touch or have touched us with the same innocence and lively curiosity. Moreover, they also evoke the unforgettable children from François Truffaut's films, sitting at their desks in "The 400 Blows" and being rambunctious in their classes in "Small Change." The children encountered by Kiarostami, however, live a life quite different from Truffaut's French kids or the Western kids close to us, as they are indoctrinated from a very young age, chanting mantras in the schoolyard to idolize the first Imam, Islam, and the Islamist victors of the East, the West, and Saddam. And yet, even though the filmmaker does not hesitate to expose these extensive brainwashing sessions for what they are, without insisting so that viewers can form their own opinions, this is not his main interest. No, what truly interests him are these children and their homework, the way they do their homework (or what prevents them from doing it), their relationship with these lessons and with those who demand they be learned, what they gain from them, their joys, their sorrows, their punishments, their rewards (nonexistent), the way they integrate their homework into their evening routine while parents are often too busy or tired to supervise. The fear, too.

The children's interviews, shot in almost fixed eye-level shots, are interspersed with shots of Kiarostami asking his questions from behind his legendary tinted glasses and shots of the cameraman filming, immobile behind his camera, as if he were always there, in a corner, capturing these children who cannot escape the interrogation. Kiarostami loves paradoxes, and yet his treatment of the children is anything but an ordeal. While he is direct and asks difficult questions (family and school life is not easy for many of these kids), his tone remains conciliatory, interested, friendly, simple, without judgment. It is this profound humanity that marked the great Iranian filmmaker, and in this remarkable documentary from his early period, he applies this infinite humanity to demonstrate through the accumulation of testimonies the impact of the rigidity of the Iranian education system in shaping the depersonalization of these youngest citizens (the testimony of two adults, who denounce the methods and the pressure they generate, is unexpected and singularly eloquent). Kiarostami shows us these children before they are fully molded, when they are still whole, vibrating with their own individuality. Knowing that their treatment and education will likely eventually overcome this individuality and turn them into pure conformists is terribly troubling and moving. One can dare to hope that some will follow the path advocated by the interviewed adult and by Kiarostami himself, managing to preserve a certain freedom of thought.

Claire Valade
Critic and programmer