We are now in the middle of summer—the season of leisure for children and teenagers. Yet our cinema offers little of value to meet their needs. The truth is that not only children’s TV programs have faded into memory and turned into nostalgic relics of our childhood; children’s cinema has suffered the same fate. Unlike the past—when long lines formed at theaters for The School of Mice, Gulnar, or more recently Kolah Ghermezi and Pesar Khaleh—today almost no one turns to cinema for children.
Although the crisis of dwindling audiences affects Iranian cinema as a whole and is not limited to children’s films, history shows that whenever a remarkable children’s film has been made, it has been met with great enthusiasm—often even attracting more adults than children. To this day, many grown-ups eagerly rewatch the cartoons and films of their childhood. Why then has cinema for children and teenagers—once flourishing in the 1990s—now retreated into obscurity, losing its audience and its vitality?
We still carry in our collective visual memory many international awards, global recognition, and golden recollections from the heyday of Iranian children’s cinema. A cinema that, at times, also served as a vehicle for intellectual or even political expression through allegory and symbolism, earning lasting artistic value. Where Is the Friend’s Home? stands as a prime example of this legacy. But today, children’s cinema in Iran no longer enjoys that vitality. What once drew crowds and won global honors is no longer a symbol of artistic prestige.
For years, we have been talking about the audience crisis in children’s cinema—about the need for greater attention, financial and institutional support, the involvement of leading filmmakers, and policies that could revive it and free it from cliché. Everyone talks about “children’s cinema”—some mean cinema for children, others cinema about children, and still others invent new labels that, at times, seem to do little more than trap children within words, leaving them overlooked.
Of course, a thorough diagnosis requires more space than these pages allow and demands interdisciplinary studies—cinematic, psychological, and sociological—to analyze both children’s films and their audiences. Some of the problems stem from the overall crisis of Iranian cinema, plagued by challenges in both production and distribution. But children’s cinema, as a specialized genre, has its own requirements and conditions that set it apart from cinema for adults.
Even among filmmakers and critics, there is disagreement over the roots of the problem. Some see the greatest weakness in the screenplay—the same Achilles’ heel that troubles Iranian cinema as a whole. They argue that the secret of children’s cinema’s success in the 1990s was its storytelling. Culturally, Iranian children are deeply attuned to stories and narratives, and it is primarily the story structure that draws them in. No matter how noble the message, it will not engage children unless it is embedded in a compelling story. Some even argue that the presence of a narrator or storyteller functions as a symbolic substitute for the grandmother figure, making the child feel that a story is being told just for them. Precisely because of this, children’s screenplays, shaped by psychological and developmental needs, are among the most complex to craft.
Others emphasize the creation of memorable child heroes and characters. Children’s minds are naturally drawn to mythical and dreamlike heroes that resonate with their imagination. Thus, fantasy and imagination play a key role in making children’s films appealing. For some, the fading of fantasy in recent works explains the shrinking audience. Others disagree, claiming the opposite—that fantasy elements are now overused in children’s media worldwide, and it is precisely their overabundance that has dulled their impact.
Still others see the crisis as rooted not within cinema itself, but in broader social and technological changes. With the rise of digital technology and video games, children’s leisure time has been reshaped, and their visual tastes transformed. From this perspective, the problem lies in cinema’s inability to keep pace with the new aesthetics of childhood.
Children’s needs and desires, shaped by the historical expansion of modernity, have been transformed. Thus, Iranian cinema is now confronted with a “new child” and a “new childhood.” Unless this new childhood is understood, children’s cinema will remain in crisis. Children will not return to the movie theater until they see their concerns and desires reflected on screen. While the technical tools of filmmaking have advanced, our cinema still lags in understanding its child audience—that is the critical gap that demands serious attention.
What is needed is interdisciplinary research and collaboration between scholars and filmmakers to better understand today’s complex child, in the hope of reviving and renewing children’s cinema. Today’s children are dynamic and active, but our children’s cinema is static in response to them. Cinema must learn to speak their language.
Our children’s cinema has aged prematurely—it faltered before it ever truly matured. It is as if we have run out of stories for our children, or forgotten their shared language. Yet despite cultural and social transformations, one truth remains universal: children everywhere, at all times, long to hear stories. The success of past children’s films rested on their compelling storytelling. The richest messages cannot captivate a child unless woven into a story.
In the end, all the causes identified by critics—whether weak scripts, fading child heroes, lack of storytelling, poor direction, or external factors like distribution problems, the broader audience crisis, and competition from digital entertainment—form pieces of the same puzzle. Careful research into these factors may reveal strategies to overcome the crisis.
Broadly, the threats to children’s cinema fall into two categories:
- Internal factors: weak screenwriting, loss of child heroes and myths, lack of storytelling structure, and insufficient direction.
- External factors: poor screening opportunities, the general audience crisis in Iranian cinema, and the rise of digital technologies and alternative forms of entertainment.
Perhaps one of the best solutions is to ask children themselves—the primary audience—what they want from cinema. As Rumi wrote:
“Since your dealings are with children, You must open the language of childhood.”