General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Song of Sparrows (آواز گنجشکها)

The Song of Sparrows (Persian: آواز گنجشک‌ها, Avaze gonjeshk-ha) is a 2008 Iranian drama film written, directed, and produced by Majid Majidi, with a screenplay co-written by Mehran Kashani. It follows Karim, an ostrich-farm worker near Tehran who is fired after an ostrich escapes and drifts into work as a motorcycle taxi driver in the city, where his honest nature is gradually tested.¹ The film won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival for Reza Naji and four Crystal Simorghs at the 26th Fajr International Film Festival, and it was Iran's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.²^•³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Director, producer, co-writer	Majid Majidi; screenplay with Mehran Kashani¹
Year, runtime, language	2008; 96 minutes; Persian¹
Lead cast	Reza Naji as Karim, with Maryam Akbari, Kamran Dehghan, Hamed Aghazi, and Shabnam Akhlaghi¹
Berlin 2008	Silver Bear for Best Actor (Reza Naji) at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival²
Fajr 2008	Four Crystal Simorghs at the 26th Fajr festival, including Best Director³
Key crew	Music Hossein Alizadeh; cinematography Turaj Mansuri; editing Hassan Hassandoost¹
US release	Limited release April 3, 2009; gross $115.9K⁵

Spoilers

Plot

Karim works at an ostrich farm outside Tehran and lives a simple, contented life with his family in a small house. When one of the ostriches runs away, he is blamed for the loss and fired. Soon after, he travels to the city to repair his elder daughter's hearing aid, which has broken shortly before her important exams, but the cost of replacing it is beyond his means. A businessman mistakes him for a motorcycle taxi driver and jumps on the back of his bike, and this accidental ride becomes his new profession, ferrying people and goods through Tehran's heavy traffic.¹^•³

The people and goods he deals with daily begin to transform Karim's generous and honest nature, to the distress of his wife and daughters; he returns home each evening with salvaged junk piled in his backyard. In a parallel thread, his son and the boy's friends hope to clear the abandoned village reservoir of mud and release a red fish into it. After an accident forces Karim to reflect on his life, the boys' persistence in their project helps restore the values he had once cherished.¹^•⁶

Production and style

Majidi made the film in the Iranian year 1386 (2008) as its writer, director, and producer, working from a screenplay co-written with Mehran Kashani.³ The crew included the composer Hossein Alizadeh, the cinematographer Turaj Mansuri, and the editor Hassan Hassandoost.¹

The film belongs to the tradition of the New Iranian Cinema and uses mostly non-professional actors, whose realistic performances keep the story believable. Majidi's characters speak more through the environments they inhabit than through dialogue: fast cuts and cluttered gray imagery convey the chaos of Tehran, set against static, long shots of the village and its scenic mountains, with Alizadeh's music underscoring the contrast.⁶ Reviewers noted the restrained style: Majidi depicts Karim's transformation through glances, movements, and environmental detail rather than elaborate dialogue.⁷

Festival run and awards

The film premiered worldwide at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2008, where it competed for the Golden Bear among 21 films; the jury was led by the Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras.⁸ It did not win the Golden Bear, but Reza Naji received the Silver Bear for Best Actor for his performance as Karim.²^•⁹ Naji, who had acted in Majidi's earlier films, was praised by critics for giving the best performance of his career, a notable result for a non-professional actor competing against the leading actors of American and European cinema.¹⁰

At the 26th Fajr International Film Festival, the film led the field with nominations in eleven categories according to one contemporary report, and received four Crystal Simorghs: Best Director (Majidi), Best Editing (Hassan Hassandoost), Best Music (Hossein Alizadeh), and Best Makeup (Saeed Malekan).³^•⁸ The film also screened at the 2008 San Sebastian Festival in the Zabaltegi-Pearls section¹ and at the Busan International Film Festival's A Window on Asian Cinema section.¹¹ A contemporary report describes it as the opening film of the 2008 Venice International Film Festival.¹²

Oscar submission. Iran selected the film for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards. In January 2009 it was eliminated from the shortlist of nine films, a cut the Islamic Republic's news agency attributed to the political conditions of the time.⁴ Later that year, the National Board of Review of America named it among the five best foreign films of 2009.¹³

Reception

The film opened in limited release in the United States on April 3, 2009, distributed by Regent Releasing, and grossed $115.9K. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 98% Tomatometer from 41 reviews and an 87% Popcornmeter audience score, with the critics' consensus calling it "a heartfelt, affecting parable" and "another gem from Iranian director Majid Majidi."⁵ Stephen Holden of The New York Times described it as a simple fable of a righteous man's relationship to his family, his community, and his faith, and singled out the overhead shot of Karim carrying a blue door through a field.¹⁴ The French news agency's report from Berlin compared the film to Majidi's Children of Heaven, the 1999 Oscar nominee, saying both depict the innocence and initiative of children facing life's hardships.³

Iranian criticism was more divided. Masoud Ferasati, writing on the Manzoom review site, called the film a strained passage between tradition and modernity in the manner of the commercial Iranian filmfarsi (commercial, formulaic pre-revolution Iranian popular cinema) genre, criticizing its decorative subplots and symbolic imagery.¹⁵ A Radio Zamaneh essay on labor in Iranian cinema argued that the film, like most films touching on working-class life, weaves the worker's world into themes of family and poverty without addressing the substantive condition of a real worker.¹⁶

Place in Majidi's career

The Song of Sparrows was Majidi's seventh feature and followed films including Baduk (1990), The Father (1995), Children of Heaven (1997), The Color of Paradise (1998), Baran (2000), and The Willow Tree (2004).¹⁷ Majidi, born on 28 Farvardin 1338 in Tehran, is described by his US distributor as the only Iranian director ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, through Children of Heaven.¹⁷^•¹⁴ After this film he moved to a large international project about the life of the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad: The Messenger of God.¹⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026