The White Balloon

A journey to buy a goldfish becomes a race against time in Jafar Panahi’s Cannes prize-winning feature film debut.

Persian New Year (Nowruz) is fast approaching.

After a shopping trip with her mother, seven-year-old Razieh has her heart set on buying a new goldfish – not a skinny one like the goldfish she has at home, but a nice chubby one. She eventually convinces her mother to give her the money; however, the return trip to the shops isn’t easy, and the clock counting down to the new year is ticking.

Curator’s Note

While working as an assistant director on Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees, Jafar Panahi multitasked, collaborating with Kiarostami on a screenplay for The White Balloon. Reportedly, Panahi had a loose framework for the story, and Kiarostami recorded a screenplay verbally into a tape recorder on drives between shooting locations.

The White Balloon recalls Kiarostami’s early films that were produced for the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, especially the short film Bread and Alley (1970), about a young boy encountering a scary dog while on an errand. Both films exist in the small universe of a child, where streets are narrow and the depth of vision is limited.

The White Balloon premiered at Iran’s Fajr Film Festival and went on to screen at Cannes where it received the Caméra d’Or prize for best first feature film.

Reece Goodwin, Curator (Film & TV)