It is widely recognised that children are prominent protagonists in Iranian New Wave cinema. However, film-critics and scholars alike have given little attention to the recurrent figure of the displaced youth. This character can nonetheless act as a heuristic thematic category to provide insights into the representation of youth and displacement in Iranian films made to date, whilst shedding light on the distinct tradition of Iranian cinema. With particular reference to Bashu, the Little Stranger (1986), directed by Bahram Beyzaie, one of the first Iranian directors to feature children protagonists, Majid Majidi’s Baran (2001) and Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami’s Sonita (2016), this article argues that (self-)representation of displaced youth puts into sharper contrast the inherent polysemy of the figure of the child. From allegorical treatments to more explicit portrayals of migration in the Iranian society, displaced youths are used by filmmakers to represent exclusion and conviviality.