Once again Majid Majidi centers his moral-heavy narrative around the plight of marginalized youths. Despite this common ground with his more prestigious previous pictures, their emotional intensity and socio-political urgency elude the Iranian director’s latest effort: a story of delinquent child laborers searching for an obscure treasure supposedly buried underneath a Teheran free school for wayward boys. The lesson about the value of education looms large from the moment that violent gang leader Ali (Roohollah Zamani) and his companions Mamad (Mohammad Mahdi Mousavifar), Reza (Mani Ghafouri) and Abolfazl (Abolfazl Shirzad), all portrait by unsteady non-professionals, eagerly enroll to spend their off hours digging in the building’s basement.
Pairing Dickensian didactic with Neo-Realist nonchalance, the allegoric adventure stymies the sentimental satisfaction of watching exploited kids from broken families ushered to promising careers by caring teachers like Mr. Rafie (Javad Ezati). Instead, Majidi and co-author Nima Javidi pile secondary strands upon their feeble fictional framework until the convoluted construction collapses. This narrative debacle is as foreseeable as the disappointment awaiting the protagonist. A rather unsympathetic stand-in for a generation of socially neglected young men, Ali’s limited options still feel like privilege compared to a girl’s, like Abolfazl’s sister Zahra (Shamila Shirzad). But such discrepancies are lost to the plethoric plot too assiduous with his pedagogic ambitions.
- OT: Korshid
- Director: Majid Majidi
- Screenplay: Majid Majidi, Nima Javidi
- Country: Iran
- Year: 2020
- Running Time: 99 min.
- Cast: Ali Nassirian, Javad Ezati, Tannaz Tabatabaei, Roohollah Zamani, Mohammad Mahdi Mousavifar, Shamila Shirzad, Abolfazl Shirzad, Mani Ghafouri
- Release date: 05.05.2022
- Image © MFA