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Product Detail |
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Audio Format: DD 2.0 Stereo Video Format: Widescreen 1.85:1 (Anamorphic) Languages: Pashtu Subtitles: English Region Code: 1 Year Made: 2003 Running Time: 83
Writer/director Siddiq Barmak makes his film debut with Osama, the first all-Afghan feature released since the end of the Taliban rule. In the early days of the regime, a young girl (Marina Golbahari) and her widowed mother (Zobeydeh Sahar) participate in a demonstration for women's right to work. When the demonstration is broken up by the Taliban, they hide out with local street kid Espandi (Mohamad Aref Harat).
When the Taliban take over a hospital where the mother secretly works, they are arrested and jailed. In order to go to work, the mother dresses the young girl as a boy. Forced to attend school, the girl reunites with Espandi, who refers to her as Osama. She struggles to maintain her disguise in order to survive. Osama won an honorable mention at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.
The first major Afghan movie produced after the fall of the Taliban, Siddiq Barmak's Osama (2003) is not only a vital social document, but also an intense, moving film. Centering on a girl who must disguise herself as a boy to work so her family can survive, Osama mercilessly exposes the effects of the sub-human status of women under the Taliban, including father-, son-, and brotherless families who face starvation because professionally trained mothers can't work, brutal punishments for those who help females find jobs, and the mullahs' power to force marriage upon young fatherless girls.
Barmak's arresting visuals reveal how such tiny details as a pair of shoes or an exposed ankle can be a girl's undoing; the lyrically shot opening sequence of a women's protest is at once a startling image of a sea of blue burkas and a potent reminder of the women's dehumanization.
The poignant relationship between the girl and the street boy who nicknames her "Osama" to protect her when they're taken to a madrassah attests to Barmak's skill with his non-professional actors (Barmak found lead actress Marina Golbahari when she asked him for change), as well as the invidious effect of the Taliban regime on malleable young males. Criminally overlooked by the Academy, but winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe, Osama is one of the rare overtly political films that succeeds as a work of cinematic artistry. - Lucia Bozzola
Features:
- "Sharing Hope and Freedom" Featurette with Director Siddiq Barmak
- Original Theatrical Trailer
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