Tonight’s Homework review – Kiarostami-inspired snapshot of Iran’s wealth gap

Inequality is exposed in a series of interviews with schoolkids in a heartbreaking doc that echoes Abbas Kiarostami’s documentary HomeworkA cheeky-faced boy of seven or eight is asked what he would wish for.

“A big bike and a balloon that never bursts!” he replies with a huge grin, tickled with his answer.

Another boy around the same age, more shabbily dressed and serious looking, is asked what life is about.

He chews his bottom lip: “Life is something that is filled with difficulty.” This often heartbreaking, painful documentary from Ashkan Nejati and Mehran Nematollahi has a simple premise: interviewing Iranian schoolkids to camera about their lives, school, homework and hopes for the future.It’s a sequel of sorts to godfather of modern Iranian cinema Abbas Kiarostami’s 1989 documentary Homework, which put the same questions to children growing up in the shadow of the Iran-Iraq war.

The new

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