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Little Samaneh lives with her mother in a one-room apartment and frequently must accompany her to her job in a garment factory, where she acts like the wilful pre-schooler she is. Mother fulfils a dream by buying Samaneh a pair of shiny red boots, one of which is immediately lost. The Boots is an engaging parable following the trail of the eponymous footwear through the streets, alleys and gutters of urban Iran. Much like Where Is My Friend's Home?, the film illuminates some of the blind alleys of childhood in an almost existential search among strangers whose familiarity seems a vestigial holdover from village life. Here is a child finding solutions in an adult world, guided by a child's logic, instincts and fears. But behind the foregrounded girl we see a mother struggling with no help from society, guided only by a mother's love, instincts and fears. The Boots is very much her story through that of her child. |