The Orphanage

Like the Antoine Doinel films of Francois Truffaut, Shahrbanoo Sadat and Anwar Hashimi are creating not just a series of films but a life story.

Amid the missteps, the care the filmmaker has for this story prevails.

A coming-of-age story that uses the language of cinema to tell its story.

Tenderness, grief, vulnerability are all easier to understand when filtered through the lush lens of Bollywood.

There is such energy and vigour and openness in this movie. If Sadat continues with Quodrat's life story, there could be something like Truffaut going on here, blended with poetic gentleness of Kiarostami.

What sets "Orphanage" apart are the moments when Qodrat's imagination makes Bollywood-esque musical numbers out of his fantasies.

Fantastical scenes of the more idyllic or proactive life Quodrat dreams of are interspersed like scenes from one of the movies he loves, and it is this visual expression of his inner life that reveals to viewers the suffering and grief...

Emotionally engaging, The Orphanage presents a picture of the hardship and deprivation that youngsters around the world endure when they are orphaned or abandoned due to war and poverty.

The best part of the film is that Qodrat routinely breaks into dream-like fantasies straight out of Bollywood films.

While events are told in a kid-centric, cinema-verite style, and are based on the diaries of Anwar Hashimi, Qodrat's inner life is periodically portrayed by Bollywood-like fantasy sequences, among the most charming parts of the film.