The White Balloon

A seven-year-old girl navigates the busy streets of Tehran while trying to buy a goldfish in the utterly charming 1995 debut of Jafar Panahi, the widely acclaimed director whose recent feature 3 Faces also screens at BAMPFA this season. Cowritten by Abbas Kiarostami (Panahi’s mentor and the subject of a current BAMPFA retrospective), the film captures a city landscape through a child’s ever-curious eyes, lingering on all the marvels and misadventures encountered along the way. “A reminder that the simplest forms of filmmaking can be the most satisfying” (Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times), this deceptively spontaneous gem (whose title riffs on Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon) earned Cannes’ Caméra d’Or.