It is an Iranian film released on 1987-02-01 (Dawn Festival) and was released in France on March 21, 1990. In Douban still has a high score of 8.8.
The film tells the story of a group of children in a remote mountain village primary school in Iran, listening to a teacher in class. While checking his homework, the teacher found that Muhammad had repeatedly failed to complete his homework, so he severely criticized him, saying that if he committed another crime, he would be expelled immediately. The teacher emphasizes to the students that this is to help them establish good rules. After school that day, the little boy Amud found himself bringing home his homework notebook from the same table Ashd. Having understood the teacher's temptation, Amud understood that this assignment was the proof that Muhand would continue to listen. In order to return the homework book to the table, Amud had hoped that his mother and grandfather could help, but both failed. Therefore, he could only go alone, to the village in the opposite mountain to find the same table and return the homework book. However, because he did not know the home of the same table, he ran into walls everywhere and encountered unimaginable difficulties and obstacles...
The film won the Art Film Award at the 42nd Cannes Film Festival.
The film is the famous work of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, and his first film to enter the international vision, first received domestic acclaim, won the Tehran Film Festival Jury Special Recommendation Award, from 1989 in Europe, first at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland, won the Bronze Leopard Award, the Jury Award and the Fabisi Special Recommendation Award, and in the same year won the Cannes International Film Festival Art Film Award. As the most important film director in Iran and the world today, Abbas Kiarostami is well known.
"Where Is My Friend's House" was filmed in a small village called Kogail in northwestern Iran and several nearby villages, about four hundred kilometers north of Tehran, where Life Goes On and Under the Olive Tree was also filmed, and film researchers in many countries have invariably referred to these films as the Abbas film trilogy. These three works (and "Close-ups") reflect Abbas's unique artistic style in a more concentrated way, and the first thing that should be mentioned is perhaps the following: the use of documentary film techniques to capture the original state of life, while breaking the boundaries between reality and illusion, favoring children as actors and performance objects, refusing to use professional actors, repeatedly expressing the same theme, repeatedly deliberating on the dialogue of the characters, the uncertainty of the plot and even the filming process, adopting an open-ended play structure and ending, and so on.
Reality shattered the child's dreams, and Ahmed's repeated four-stroke twisting mountain road didn't lead anywhere, and finally, brought him back to his starting point. He returned home with his friend's homework notebook and wrote his homework for him, in another way to save his friend from being punished by the teacher. What he did was actually deceiving the teacher, which of course was a mistake, but he was also out of helplessness, because of the rules of adult society.
Many people, once parented, feel as if they had never experienced childhood or growth.
Returning a friend's homework book is really a trivial matter for adults, so small that they may not even have the patience to ask a few more questions, but for Amer, an 8-year-old child, returning the homework book is a big thing that must be done, so big that it is worth using a movie to tell the whole story.
The difference between big things and small things is the difference between adults and children.
Adults emphasize the rules, you can play, but you have to write your homework first, you can go upstairs, but you have to take off your shoes first, you can disobey, but you will face the punishment of being beaten, as long as there is a result that meets the standards, as for your explanations and requests, those are not important, the important thing is to educate you, let you put aside those crazy and inefficient behaviors, and eventually, become a person who matches the rules.
Children do not have so many realistic and mature standards, and children also have children's rules, but their rules are not to stand idly by to the plight of friends. When the child's heart accepts a person, then even if he is weak, he must protect his friend from harm.
We're friends, so I'm doing my best to help you!
The loss of innocence is the price of growth.
We're friends, so I'm doing my best to help you! Even if I am punished, I will not hesitate to pay and gain, I risk running to the black and black alleyways, talking to every strange face, looking for every trace, just to find you who is called a friend.
This is the determination that belongs to the child, which seems childish, but it is actually simple sincerity.
When adults lament that the truth in the world is difficult to find, they never remember that every emotionally exhausted adult was once a naïve and simple child.
It's just that adults really can't figure out how they grew from a clear child to a muddy adult.
Rules and order for the shaping of people and the adherence to personal inner creeds, or a child's Amer may not be able to see the whole picture, but when we watch the movie, the movie is also dismantling the contradictions for us, no matter what kind of mentality we look at this movie, we can always feel that the most innocent and simple heart in the world always belongs to the child.
The teacher checked LinMa's homework and said appreciatively, "Well done", the pages turned, and the little yellow flower clipped in the homework book lay peacefully in the page, intact, like a reward for friendship, and believed that this little yellow flower, at this moment, was enough to warm all the muddy adults.