Sun Children: Four Boys in Tehran

A film for the thousands of children trapped in child labor. That is what Iranian director Majid Majidi has made with "Khōrshīd" (Sun Children in its international release). The idea came to him when he learned of a school, funded by private donations, that offered education and real prospects to children who would otherwise spend their entire childhoods working the streets of Tehran. These are kids made shrewd by necessity, living mostly outdoors; their parents are in prison, addicted to drugs, or dead.
Majidi works in two registers at once: neorealist scenes showing how the school functions and the dedication of those who run it, alongside genre elements that borrow from both escape films and adventure stories for young audiences. A gang of four street kids is given an assignment by an aging criminal: dig a tunnel beneath the school to retrieve some mythical treasure. To get access to the building, they scheme their way into enrollment—not because they want to study, but to dig underground. A sympathetic vice-principal helps them, admiring (and misreading) their determination.
The realistic sections are somewhat didactic, though they're told with genuine intent to shed light on social conditions; they work well enough paired with the genre material, which echoes prison-break and heist stories, but gains freshness from the energy of these young protagonists. And they do stumble onto a real chance to change their lives—if only they realize that the treasure isn't buried beneath the earth, but waiting in a classroom.