A boy who cannot seem to do anything right, a classroom that laughs at him, and one teacher who refuses to give up: Ali Ghavitan's Flight of the Kites (Parvaze Badbadak Ha) is a small-scale 2012 Iranian family drama about how far quiet patience can carry a child everyone else has written off.
What is Parvaze Badbadak Ha about?
Moslem is a schoolboy stuck at the bottom of every pecking order he knows. At school his classmates mock him; at home his parents meet his struggles with criticism rather than comfort, so failure follows him from the classroom door to the dinner table. The one adult who sees something else in him is his teacher — a man who chooses empathy where others reach for ridicule, and who takes on Moslem's difficulties as if they were his own. What unfolds is not a story of sudden transformation but of steady, stubborn encouragement: small victories won against a background of low expectations, and the slow discovery that a child's confidence, like a kite, needs both wind and someone holding the line. At a compact 80 minutes, the film keeps its focus tightly on this bond between pupil and mentor.
About the cast
Flight of the Kites is very much Ali Ghavitan's project — he directs the film and also appears in it, alongside Ali Marefati and Hossein Mohammadian. The cast is drawn from faces rather than stars, which suits the film's modest, observational register, particularly in the school scenes where much of the story lives.
Context & significance
The film belongs to a long-running strand of Iranian cinema devoted to children and education — stories where a classroom becomes the whole moral universe and a teacher's attention can change a life's direction. Made in 2012 as an independent, low-budget production, it aims at family audiences and carries a plainly stated message about empathy over judgment. The kite of the title works as the film's central image — fragile, ordinary, and capable of rising when handled with care.
Watching Parvaze Badbadak Ha on K-Time
You can stream Flight of the Kites on K-Time in its original Persian audio. The page you are reading is open to everyone; playback simply asks for a K-Time account login. K-Time serves Persian-speaking families across the diaspora with a Farsi interface, making this an easy pick for parents who want Iranian films they can watch together with their kids.