Part of the 2014 30 countries challenge, Film #15 - Afghanistan

In a 1-2 punch we watched The Milk of Sorrow and Osama back to back. Both films show how difficult it can be to be a girl in different parts of the world.

Osama is particularly heartbreaking. The poor girl lives in a world controlled by idiotic men (the Taliban) where survival requires a man. Women and their children will most likely die if they do not have a male relative who will provide for them. Women can't work. If by some fate they have no father, brother, son or uncle who can work to buy food, they are done for. If they protest they will be shot at.…

Part of the 30 Days in May challenge, 2014 edition

Osama also reviewed with Milk of Sorrow

By happenstance, we watched the Peruvian Milk of Sorrow and then the Afghan Osama back to back on consecutive days. Afterwards, I thought that these two films, although from different countries and depicting different political circumstances, were amazingly like a part 1 and part 2 of the same film. We watched in reverse order, though, as Osama is the beginning of the tale. There is something to say about the order we watched, though, which I’ll explain later.

More descriptive than my usual reviews, and contains some mild spoilers. Nothing more than is contained in both films descriptions.

Part 1 - Osama

Osama…

Set in the time where the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, a preteen girl has to dress like a boy to get a job and help support her family. But everything goes wrong when the extremists take her so she (or rather say, he) joins their troop.

Many may complain about the acting, on whether they all feel like actors or not, and they all may have a point. Sometimes the movie can feel a bit too artsy for its own good, and there's this sort of suspense of disbelief audiences need so certain things work out.

However, this, the first film to be ever shot on Afghanistan after the Talibans banned the creation of all movies, certainly has some stunning cinematography…

Film Number 15 on PinHeadLarry145's 30 Days 30 Countries Film Challenge!

Afghanistan, 2003.

Much like The Lives of Others at the start of this challenge, Osama tells a story that only the films home country is allowed to tell. Where The Lives of Others was made in a time where opinions were safe, this one was made in a time where it was a little more risky. The film makers could've very well have been risking their lives by telling this story.

Osama tells the tale of a young Afghani woman who has to pose as a boy in order to provide for her family during the rein of the Taliban. She ironically takes the name "Osama" and begins taking…

The young girl in this story, who remains unnamed, is deeply loved and cared for by her mother and grandmother. Her father had been killed some time ago so there is no male provider for the family, and women are not allowed to work. Through desperation, her mother cuts the girl's hair and disguises her a boy so she is able to find work and earn money to support the family. However, this leads the girl through a harrowing series of events that were truly heartbreaking and difficult to watch; and the final shot, in all its simplicity, tells a thousand deeply upsetting stories.

The film is completely told through the girl's point of view, but there is a whole…

AROUND THE WORLD
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Afghanistan
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Osama
Siddiq Barmak
2003
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Once upon a time there was a good-looking boy whose father had died. He went to work and came home exhausted. He was tired of working. He wished he could be a girl so he wouldn’t have to work. One day, the wise man told him that if he passed under a rainbow, he would become a girl. “What’s a rainbow?” he asked. It’s a souvenir left to us by Rustam, the great hero, to free us from pain and misery. Boys turn into girls, and girls into boys.

Osama bears the legacy of being the first film made in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, who…

The best elements of Osama are things that I feel like would have been effective no matter what. Of course the subject matter would be horrific and quite depressing, but I don't think from the filmmaking and story standpoint there's anything to chew on really.

The direction is passable with an interesting pov gimmick at the start that quickly gets left behind but nothing about it managed to really make me feel bad for the characters involved, partly because of how unremarkable they are. And I get that it's a very low-budget movie but knowing that didn't really made the first half of it any less of a slog to get through. The actors were very solid for the most…

Cinema World Tour, Film #10
Country: Afghanistan

What a depressing film.
During my travels, I visited a region in Northern Pakistan at the border to Afghanistan, called Swat Valley. From 2009 to 2015, the Taliban were still in control in that region, and I visited it 4 years later, in 2019. The region is very rural, the culture quite similar to Afghanistan a few kilometers away. It did indeed look a bit like in the film Osama, and obviously, I didn't meet one single women. During my time there, I talked with some people about the influence of Taliban, to hear what was their opinion. Many of the men told me that of course, the Taliban commited crimes, but overall,…