Worth: $14.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Reza Naji, Hossein Abedini, Parsa Maghami, Helia Mohammadkhani, Martine Malalai Zikria, Shahrzad Kamalzadeh
Intro:
Despite its simple and potentially depressing premise, everything comes together perfectly in its feel-good third act.
A rather special statue is left in a taxi cab and a series of events puts it in the hands of two children – the movie-loving Yahya (Parsa Maghami) and his friend Leila (Helia Mohammadkhani).
The two young non-actors steal every scene in this entertaining and gently humorous Persian-language British production shot in Iran. It might be an ostensibly lightweight and simple story about a couple of kids wondering what to do with this mysterious and possibly valuable statue, but there’s a real richness under the surface.
The story is set in the village of Padeh – a wasted landscape where the kids help their families by wading through rubbish at a tip after school, looking for plastic that can be salvaged. Saber (Hossein Abedini) and Nasser (Reza Naji) run the show, giving the kids – who they treat as adults – money at the end of the day. These kids know that life is tough but there is ‘joie de vivre’ amongst the trash, and it’s this joy that makes Winners such a beautiful film.
Yahya lives with his widowed mother (Martine Malalai Zikria). She doesn’t understand her movie-crazy kid, who stays up half the night watching DVDs that he’s borrowed from Saber.
Winners’ fable-like charm is cumulative. Despite its simple and potentially depressing premise, everything comes together perfectly in its feel-good third act.
