The Runner (Davandeh) is a 1985 film by Amir Naderi, one of the major directors of Iranian cinema before and after the Iranian Revolution.

The Runner was perhaps the first of the post-revolution Iranian films to attract worldwide attention. It set the tone for many of the films which followed: realism, child's eye perspective of the world, innocence, gentleness, set in poor neighbourhoods, exposing great disparities in wealth, resting much of the film on the shoulders of one young actor, using children's lives as analogies for, or explicit expositions of, the problems of the adult world.

Survival May Cost Them Their Lives!

Runner takes its audience as close as possible to the mental and physical experience of doing the Great North Run through the moving image. Using material from the race itself and combining this with specially shot sequences of a single runner, it follows the journey of a man, one soul in the flood of 50,000. Written by Michael Baig-Clifford

A young man with an addiction to gambling has managed to get himself into serious debt. In an effort to pay off the bookies, his uncle pulls a few strings and gets him a job working for a gangster who needs a "runner" to place bets with various bookies. The gangster keeps his new "runner" on a short leash, and for the most part the young gambler behaves himself. However, the temptation of walking around with large sums of cash proves too great, and the "runner" puts both his job and his survival on the line when he dips into his boss's funds to buy a ring for his girlfriend. Written by Mark Deming