Great for kids to listen to more Mandarin!

Free Screening of the movie Homerun.

Homerun Chinese: (pinyin) PaoBa Haizi is a 2003 Singaporean Mandarin-language film. A remake of the award-winning Iranian film Children of Heaven, Homerun is a drama about two poor siblings and their adventures over a lost pairs of shoes. Set in 1965, the year Singapore separated from Malaysia, the film satirises political relations between the two countries, leading to its banning in Malaysia.

Family film. Mandarin audio. English and Chinese subtitles.

Overview
Set in 1965, the film's storyline revolves around the lives, family and friends of two poor Singaporean children, Chew Kiat Kun (Shawn Lee) and his younger sister Seow Fang (Megan Zheng). With their father (Huang Wenyong) in debt to a local rice merchant (Richard Low), and their mother (Xiang Yun) late in her third pregnancy, the family struggles to make ends meet. The children make the best of what little they have, while their father works long hours doing odd jobs.
The family's problems are compounded when Kiat Kun accidentally loses Seow Fang's only pair of shoes after taking them to be repaired. The children conduct a frantic search but find nothing; a karung guni man had claimed the shoes as unwanted rubbish. The Chew siblings are frustrated by the situation until their father inspires Kiat Kun to share his shoes with his sister, trading off between classes so they can both attend school. Unfortunately, this plan brings additional problems: Seow Fang is chastised for wearing oversized shoes to school, while Kiat Kun is repeatedly late as he must wait for his sister to exchange shoes with him.

Kiat Kun's friends and Beng Soon's friends arguing after an agreement is reneged on, in a political allusion.[1]
At school, a wealthy schoolmate of Kiat Kun's named Tan Beng Soon (Joshua Ang) runs a football team with his friends. Kiat Kun and his friends strike a bargain with Beng Soon to play on the team using the other boys' football shoes, in exchange for helping them cheat on their homework. However, the boys quarrel, causing an angry Beng Soon to renege on the deal and remove Kiat Kun and his friends from the team.
Without their assistance, Beng Soon and his friends are punished for producing substandard homework. Although the boys try to resolve their differences, they eventually give up on reaching an agreement. Beng Soon's grades continue to fall, and his parents decide to send him away to boarding school in England.
Meanwhile, Seow Fang sees her classmate wearing her lost shoes to school. She and Kiat Kun follow the girl home, but after realising her father is blind and that the family lived in the slums, they decide not to reclaim the shoes. However, a few days later, Seow Fang notices that her classmate is wearing a new pair; upon confronting her, she discovers that the girl has discarded the old pair at the kampung rubbish dump. The Chew siblings frantically search the rubbish dump for her shoes, but only discover them as they are destroyed during a trade unionist riot.

The climax of the film, in which Kiat Kun is pushed to the limit but trips and finishes first — a parallel to Singapore's political history.[2]
Kiat Kun is dejected until he learns that the third prize in the 1965 National Primary School Cross Country Competition is a pair of shoes. Because he pretended to be sick on the day his school selected representatives for the race, he pleads with his P.E. teacher to let him enter. The teacher, initially reluctant, relents when Kiat Kun rushes to get his cough medicine, demonstrating his running ability. As the competition begins, Kiat Kun notices that Beng Soon is also participating.
Once the starting gun fires, Kiat Kun pushes himself to the limit and eventually establishes himself among the lead runners. Kiat Kun appears assured of third place, but due to a miracle, unexpectedly trips over a stone which leads him to finish second. Beng Soon ends the race in third place. While Kiat Kun is running, Mrs Chew goes into labour, forcing Seow Fang to run across a long path littered with broken glass to find a midwife. Finally, Mrs Chew gives birth to a healthy baby boy and Beng Soon gives Kiat Kun and Seow Fang new pairs of shoes before departing.
After finally obtaining their goal of getting a new pair of shoes, they realize that there are still more problems to be encountered: the film ends with the characters looking at a long muddy path before them which they have to cross..

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