Osama

Director: Siddiq Barmak
Rated: PG

- Reviewer PTE John Wellfare

Osama

FILMS from the Middle East tend to be less concerned with entertaining the audience and far more likely to tell it like it is. Predictability is practically eliminated, giving viewers a frighteningly raw and emotionally stirring experience that feels like a window into people’s lives.

Osama was the first feature film to be made in post-Taliban Afghanistan and offers an insight into the suffering ordinary people experienced under the brutal regime.

Faced with the strict rules of the Taliban, which prohibit any woman from being outside the home without a legal male companion, a widow is forced to cut her daughter’s hair and dress her as a boy so that she can earn a living for the family.

Things get more complicated when the girl is conscripted into a Taliban-run, boys-only religious school and her masculinity regularly comes into question.

Writer/director Siddiq Barmak has created a disturbingly-real Afghanistan where Taliban-laden pickup trucks prowl the streets and a woman concealed entirely in a chador looks frighteningly alien and pitiful all at once.

He has brought the best out of his actors, especially the children, who chillingly reveal the sheer terror a young person suffers under such oppression and ever-present danger.

Osama is beautiful and horrifying all at once. It showcases the best and worst of humanity, tells a very real story and carries the viewer through a whole range of emotions. There are heroes in this story, but no superheroes. It’s not entertaining, but popular Western films seem hollow and cosmetic in comparison.