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Osama

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OSAMA is a stark and grim film that highlights the oppressive regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Based on a true story, this film follows the life of a 12-year-old Afghan girl and her mother. After the Taliban shut down the hospital that the mother works at she is desperate to find work but her efforts are bleak because she cannot go out in public without being escorted by a male. With no men in her family and no one else to help her the girl is transformed into a boy to help support the family. Aside from escorting her mother through the streets she finds work in a small foods shop. Each time she ventures outside she fears her life because if she is caught the Taliban will do serious harm to her. In addition, she fails to fully personify a boy since she speaks with a high voice, wears feminine slippers, and doesn't know the proper prayer rituals. But soon enough she is forced to join a Taliban school. During sessions of religious and military training her secret is close to being revealed. The only other boy who knows the truth names her Osama in an effort to try to ward off suspicions from the other boys. After her disguise is revealed and the Taliban has arrested her she is sure to suffer an unspeakable sentence for imitating a boy. Her future is bleak and desperate. There is no happy ending in this film, and the audience is left with a sad feeling of despair and shock. Surely we've all heard the atrocities committed by the Taliban since 9/11/01, but OSAMA enables the viewer to get a powerful glimpse of the horrendous events in Afghanistan under the Taliban. This is the first film to come out of this impoverished country since the end of the Taliban regime, but I hope it's not the last. There are a multitude of stories of Taliban victims that deserve to be heard. These people should not suffer alone. Putting a human face on this tragedy often results in the outside world understanding the horrors that happened. OSAMA is an excellent film that succeeds on many levels, and is highly recommended.

This 2004 Golden Globe award winner for Best Foreign Language film, directed by Afghani Siddiq Barmak, is a stunning indictment of the repressive, fundamentalist Taliban regime and its treatment of women. Filmed on a shoestring budget, the film is a composite of a number of true stories, coalescing into one. It is harrowing look at a feudal sort of government that equated women with little more than chattel. Forced to be totally dependent on men, the question arises as to what would be their fate, if all the men in their world were to no longer be there for them.

This is the issue that confronts one particular woman, a widowed doctor, who treats patients in secret. Unfortunately, the hospital, if one can call it that, has not paid her for some time, and she can no longer work there. Moreover, it has become too dangerous for her to travel the streets, as she is a lone woman forbidden to travel the streets without the accompaniment of a member of the male sex. As her household consists solely of three generation of women, having lost her husband and her brother, circumstances are dire indeed.

She must devise some plan of getting or earning their daily bread, if they are to survive. She turns to her young timid daughter, a girl on the cusp of womanhood. She decides that her beautiful daughter must disguise herself as a boy and go out into the world to help earn some food for the family, or they will die. Thus, the daughter is transformed into a boy called Osama. The mother then takes Osama to see a kindly former comrade of Osama's late father, who now runs a small dusty shop. There, Osama is left to work, stirring cauldrons of steaming milk, scenes that are positively medieval.

Passing as a boy, Osama is obliged to do those things that a male is expected to do. So, when the Taliban police come to the shop looking for boys for indoctrination at a mullah run school, Osama has no choice but to go. Thus, begins the downfall of Osama. Despite the best efforts of Espandi, an enterprising street urchin who has befriended Osama and knows her secret, Osama is to continue a harrowing journey that only one of her sex may travel.

This is an intriguing film that, despite being somewhat choppy and disjointed in the telling, provides a birds-eye view at what life was like for women under the Taliban. The beautiful imagery of the film is a strong counterpoint to the harshness of Taliban rule. It is a mercy for women that the Taliban is no longer in power. This film certainly brings home the absolute cruelty of that regime towards women.

Though the director uses non-actors for the roles in the film, each one of them does a yeoman's job with the given role. Arif Herati, who plays the role of Espandi, has a great deal of screen presence. Marina Gobahan, who has the starring role of Osama, is excellent as the timid and shy girl who reluctantly cross dresses as a male in order to help her family. Her terror of being killed and her fear of the Taliban is palpable throughout the film. Her eyes are most expressive, world weary and infinitely sad. It were those very eyes that drew the director to cast her in the role of Osama. This is a film that will leave its imprint on the viewer.

The DVD offers little by way of special features, though it does offer a moderately interesting interview with the director that runs about twenty minutes in length.

Golden Globe Award winner "Osama" may remind you of a certain person. The fact is, the "Osama" is about a 12 year-old girl who must survive the life in Afganistan when the Taliban ruled the city with their rigid dogmas, prohibiting many things -- photoes, music, and women going out without a male accompanied, let alone working.

[STORY] is about the unnamed girl whose family have no male relatives. This means they cannot go out to work, and the girl takes a desperate remedy -- she has her hair cut, and disguises herself as a boy, in order to work at a kind milkman's shop. Only a boy who sells scent in the street knows the truth, but how long can this trick go on when the Taliban regime seizes the power, ruling the place with fear?

[DIRECTOR] Siddiq Barmak, born in Afganistan, learned the filmmaking in Russian school (then USSR), so "Osama," often slow and quiet as it is, has a very sophisticated touch with the smooth camarawork. If you are not accustomed to watching the non-English speaking films from, say, Iran, you find it a rather tough watching at first, but as the story goes on, the film gets more intense, drawing your attention to the film's world.

[THE GIRL] is played by Marina Golbahari, who was literally "found" by the director when she was begging on the street to provide for the family. In spite of the fact that she was an amateur (the Talibans banned any films), she is THE heroine the director was looking for, and you know it if you see her very sad eyes. Actually, her eyes are strikingly pure, telling every emotion of the heroine so naturally.

[ABOUT THE ENDING] Don't worry, no spoiler. Still, you have to know that the director's first intention was different. In the original version, the girl goes away into the "rainbow." (That is why the grandmother's short story about the girl and the rainbow is included.) But Director Barmak decided on deleting it completely, watching that Golbahari could not stop crying, remembering the painful past while shooting (her father was tortured by the Taliban). So, the film ends with an open ending, which, unintentionally gives an impact, heightening the authentic tone of the film.

"Osama" is no political adenda though it will make you think about the gender, religion, and the US policies. Above all, however, this is an intense drama about a girl's life. I simply wish the happiness of the girl in film, and Marina Golbahari herself.

Never-ending hopelessness, terror, misery, despair, death were all part of a female's lot in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. This was a world where womanhood was a terrible flaw, although it did have some utility for men - especially those in charge. If I didn't know that this dark, gritty film was based on fact, I would think it was horrifying science-fiction. The first movie produced after the fall of the Taliban regime, "Osama" has won many awards, culminating in the 2004 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film. Afghani filmmaker-director Siddiq Barmak portrays the grim reality of oppression in this stark, powerful piece.

Young Marina Golbahari is outstanding as the 12 year old Afghani girl who is forced to masquerade as a boy in order to earn a living for her desperate family. Her facial expressions often communicate more than pages of dialogue could. Woman were forbidden to work under the Taliban, and those without husbands, brothers or fathers to provide for them starved. Golbahari, hair cut, dressed in her dead father's clothes and named Osama, has a widowed elderly grandmother and mother depending on her. She finds a simple job minding a complicit neighbor's store. Her disguise seems to work until the Taliban round up all the neighborhood boys, "Osama" included, to send to the local religious school, (Madrasa), which doubles as a military training camp for youths. The consequences are predictably catastrophic.

This is one of the most extraordinary films I have seen in a long while. There are scenes that appear to have been shot with a hand held camera and look like something an undercover journalist might turn in for viewing outside the country. Since filming was forbidden, these jumpy, jerky shots, and images at odd angles, give a clandestine and extremely realistic feel. Many of the scenes are shot without words, and do not need language to communicate the fear, oppression and tension in just in walking down the street. In one sequence, a man is berated and threatened by the Taliban mullahs for allowing his wife to ride on the back of his bicycle, thereby exposing her ankles.

The film is deceptively simple and may, at times, appear naive, but the message is a grim one - and heartbreaking. I thought I had some kind of basic understanding of what the women of Afghanistan went through. I wasn't even close. This is a real eye-opener and well worth your time.
JANA

I saw "Osama" on the same weekend in which Afghanistan held its first-ever free elections. The contrast between that event and what we see in this film could not be more dramatic and striking.

This is the first film made in the country since the fall of the Taliban regime. It is a harrowing study of life under that brutal dictatorship as seen through the eyes of a terrified 12-year old girl. The Taliban considered being a woman as almost akin to sinning against God. As a result, women were not allowed to hold jobs, appear in public without male escorts, or show their face or any other part of their body when venturing outdoors. "Osama" focuses specifically on the plight of war widows who were virtually forced into starvation as a result of these draconian rules. The film tells the tale of a young girl whose mother loses her job at a local hospital. To provide food for the table, the mother and the girl's grandmother devise an extremely dangerous plan to pass the youngster off as a boy, thereby allowing her to work as an assistant to a sympathetic shop owner. Even though the penalty is death if she is caught, the young girl reluctantly accedes to the plot. When she is rounded up with the other local boys to begin a program of religious indoctrination and military training, she must expend a great deal of effort to prevent her ruse from being uncovered.

"Osama" is a short film, and it doesn't intend to do anything more than offer a very small glimpse into what life was like under this tyrannical regime. In that respect, the film provides an invaluable service to those of us in the West who find it hard to believe that such mind-numbing ignorance and cruelty can still exist in our modern world. We see it, of course, every night on the news, but until an artist can translate it into recognizable human terms, the reality often doesn't hit us in the way that it should. "Osama" really brings it home to us. Through our experience with these characters, we come to understand how unutterably hopeless and miserable life can be for people trapped in a culture defined by a pre-scientific mindset of irrational bigotry and superstition. The girl, who is dubbed by one of the other characters `Osama,' is no plucky little heroine who takes on the Bad Guys, indifferent to the dangers she is facing. She is a passive victim living a life of paralyzing fear, a perfect symbol for all the other women of her country who were consigned to a similar fate.

Writer/director Siddiq Barmak has employed non-professional actors to bring the tale to life. All of them do a remarkable job, especially young Marina Golbahari, who captures the wide-eyed terror of her character with vivid exactness. Golbahari becomes such an empathetic figure that her plight is understandable to any person from any culture.

"Osama" is like one of the early works from the school of post-war Italian neo-realism: small, unadorned and devastating in its simplicity and humanity.

I understand that movies such as Osama do not appeal to everyone's taste. First off, people who lack the attention span to absorb all of the subtle details of the film will not enjoy this movie. Secondly, the people who dislike the Bush administration will not enjoy this movie because the story is overshadowed by the immense expression of American viewpoints in the Afghanistan situation.

We have to understand that we cannot watch a movie such as Osama through the perspective of an American - more importantly an American adult. Thus, I feel the director purposely centered the movie's story around the perspective of a 12-year old girl to reflect the innocent thoughts of children and their unhindered views of the environment around them. Moreover, the director effectively, honestly, and powerfully conveys the repression caused by the Taliban in Afghanistan (mainly among women).

Osama's slow moving pace can be justified because human emotion requires a longer time frame to develop than mere plot. The illustration of the complex situations that the 12-year old girl faces throughout the movie are incomplete without a general understanding of how those situations affect her. For example, the director takes great pains to film the actress returning home from her work (disguised as a boy) to show the danger involved as well as showcase her vulnerability and apprehension. All the subtle details about the dog and the mysterious man following her add to the paranoia of the situation.

As I said earlier, Osama is not everyone's cup of tea. Those who do enjoy the movie will find that it is truly an engaging film that has a lot to say about society in Afghanistan. Others may find that its subtlety is tedious and pretentious. However, do not completely discredit this movie. Either way, you will leave the movie having learned something about Afghanistan or at least be impacted in somehow.

When Osama won the Best Foreign Picture nomination in the Golden Globe Awards, I had some suspicions that in addition to it being a very good film, that this award was also a kind of 'encouragement and support' for the first film to come out of Afghanistan after the fall of Talibans.Watching it now, I can confidently say that it totally deserved to win on artistic merits alone, and wonder why on earth it was overlooked in the Oscars??!!
The film, the first by Afghani director Siddiq Barmak, is simply extraordinary! The story is of a mother and daughter who are trying to make basic ends meet under Taliban's repressive and cruel rule, and this can be achieved if the young daughter,played with such simplicity and power by amateur Marina Golbahari, disguises herself as a boy to earn a living as women were forbidden to work.
Soon enough, in a roundup of underage boys, similar to Mao's China, or Pol Pot's Cambodia, the very ideologies that the Mujjahedines were allegedly fighting against under the Soviets,the boys are forced to go to a religious and military brainwashing school, and 'Osama' mistaken for one is forced along.
Not wishing to give too much of the film, save to say that the girl's identity is discovered and what follows is one of the most tragic and haunting development and ending I have seen in a long while.
I would like to stress that Osama first of all is not about Talibans, although quite naturally they figure prominently in the story, itself based on true events, nor it is about Afghanistan, although it perfectly reflects a society that was totally engulfed in darkness and secrecy,not unlike Hoxa's Albania or Stalin's Russia. Osama rather can be viewed as the very heartbreaking and tragic story of a young girl facing impossible odds and unable to fight the huge tide that has swept her country. It is about how desperation and poverty can push people to take huge risks, knowing very well the terrible consequences..
I loved the fact that this young girl kept till the end her innocence mixed with fear and longing, that the Talibans eventually destroyed.
I could not help comparing the film with Iranian cinema in terms of style and plot,and it is not surprising since Barmak was influenced and supported by none other than Makhmelbaf Snr.The cinematographer also is the excellent Ebrahim Ghafori who has shot some of the classics of Iranian cinema like The Apple, Blackboards, The Day I became I Woman and Kandahar.
There were some similarities with Majidi's Baran, but unlike the Afghani refugee heroine of Baran who also dressed as a boy to earn a living after her father's accident but was relatively safe in Iran,'Osama' was totally trapped, faced danger and death every single minute, and did not have the opportunities however limited that Baran had.
Osama therefore is a Must See film.It will capture your senses with its colors and themes, a story that reminds us that there are people not quite so fortunate,who face daily battles just to secure one meal, and take any risks to maintain a dignity and freedom that is constantly being stripped away from them.

An Afghan film called Osama belongs to a special genre. Not just because it is Afghan, which is rare enough, but because it deals with political violence and was made, very shortly afterward, in the place where it happened.

The head of this genre is probably Rossellini's "Open City", which was about the German oppression of Rome and was made there in early 1945, only a few months after the Germans had left. Italians donned German uniforms to portray their recent oppressors.

Osama was made in Kabul in 2003 and deals with the recent tyranny of the Taliban in that city. Once again victims portray their oppressors and once again we are dealt with a gritty and depressing reality.

I liked both films, OPEN CITY and OSAMA for the openess and truth they reveal. You will see things in both of these foreign language films that you have never seen before on the big screen.

This is not a film for everybody to see. If you can handle the truth, go see it.

In the shadow of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, a 12-year old girl, whose true name we never learn, grows up as her mother and grandmother struggle to survive as they are forced to remain within the walls of their home. The only time woman are allowed to leave the home is when they are accompanied by a man, and then they must wear burkhas covering every inch of their body. Women must not work, make money, or in any other way be in a position where they are self governing. If a woman is caught by herself she risks being arrested by the Taliban, which could lead to her death, or even worse. This puts the pre-adolescent girl and her family in a predicament as her father died in the Kabul war as a martyr, which means there is no male breadwinner in their home. It means that the girl's mother must find a way to scrape together something to eat as they fear for their lives within the walls of their home.

The mother and grandmother agree that a beardless man in a burkha could pass as a woman while a girl in a costume and short hair could pass as a boy. This reasoning supports the women's idea to turn the girl into a young boy by cutting her hair and letting her wear the father's old costume after alterations. The idea is excellent as the young girl is forced to become the family's new breadwinner as it seems to be the only way they could survive. However, the girl is innocently unaware about the world as she turns her head in all directions and stares at Taliban members with obvious fear in her face. It becomes painfully obvious that she in not ready to undertake this assignment for the welfare of her family, but they have no other choice.

The girl turns into a boy, but remains a girl at heart as she returns home crying at night emotionally exhausted. The girl always seems to fall asleep with her head in the lap of her grandmother who always tells the same story of a boy who wishes he was a girl. The boy in grandmothers tale worked hard and he saw that the girls never worked as hard as he, which was the reason he wanted to be a girl. The story becomes a source for how the girl perceives society as she believes that girls cannot work hard and that boys should work hard. This reinforces the difficulty she has adapting to the Taliban society as a boy since she has been taught patriarchal values, which limits what she believes she can accomplish. In a sense, it is a form of socially learned helplessness, which has been fostered through the tale from generation to generation.

The day comes when she is forced to go to school with the boys, which becomes an eye opening experience for the girl. The education, which is only for boys, becomes an indoctrination of the Taliban faith and rule, which is emphasizes on head bobbing hymns of the Koran and weapons training. The girl has entered the boys world and the grass is not greener on the other side as grandma's tale suggests. Instead her socially learned feeble femininity intensifies among these boys who have been brought up like strong boys by their families. An example of the girl's helpless and dependent manners are exposed when she is climbing a tree during recess and she requires the the help of another boy to get down as fear petrifies her from climbing down.

The only knowledge the girl had when she entered the man's world was her what mother and grandmother have taught her, which is not much in regards to the world and Islamic gender issues. In addition, it is apparent that her fatherless upbringing has sheltered her from having a male role model in the home, which influences her view of men. However, she is forced to learn through trial and error in order to acquire the experience to stay alive in a world where the woman's life belongs to the husband.

Siddiq Barmak's story of Osama, which is the title of the film and the name a boy gives the girl, openly displays the patriarchal Taliban rule and the insignificance of womanhood. The female insignificance is enhanced through the main character's namelessness as well as her constant covering with the burkha. It is as if the identity of the woman has been erased and the Taliban laws of women helps to enforce the oppression of women through additional discriminating laws against women. In the Taliban society a woman is what the man is, which means that if the woman is a widow she is not existent to the Taliban, which is the case with her family. It should also be noted that the extremist Taliban rule is a narrow perspective and interpretation of the Koran and Islamic faith, which had dire consequences on the women of Afghanistan.

Osama is a visually rich cinematic experience as it plays with visual symbolism. One of the strongest shots of the girl is shot through prison bars while she is jumping ropes as the the camera pans across from left to right. Jumping ropes is regarded as a girl activity in Afghanistan, but the powerful message is her happiness being a girl behind the bars where the bars symbolize the imprisonment of womanhood. The film is full of similar symbolism and each moment is equally powerful. When the girl gets stuck in the tree her feebleness might become overwhelming in a modern Western perspective, but it is a powerful depiction of the socially learned helplessness many girls acquire through childhood. These intense scenes will bring about a distressing, yet marvelous, cinematic experience that must be pondered for sometime as women's rights must be considered throughout the whole world.

I noticed this excellent film in my local video store, while I was looking for something to educate myself about Afghanistan.

I would like to alert whoever reads this review to the fact that this film has nothing at all to do with Osama bin Laden. Evidently, Osama happens a fairly common boy's name in Afghanistan, and the name was chosen for the subject of this film for that reason. There isn't even a subtext or commentary about Osama bin Laden, as will become quite clear if you take time to view the terrific,"Sharing Hope and Freedom" interview with the director, Siddiq Barmak. The interview is included on the DVD, in the "Bonus Features" section.

Right at the beginning of the film, a quote from Nelson Mandela is shown. The quote is "I cannot forget, but I can forgive." I have been trying to think of exactly why this quote is placed right at the beginning of the film, and all I can think is that it could be to provide a contrasting vision of what spirituality COULD be like, when it's not twisted beyond all recognition by a bunch of psychotic mutants like the Taliban.

The little girl's mom works at a hospital, which is so underfunded that it literally must cut off oxygen supplies to dying patients. The staff tries to keep the dying patients supplied with oxygen by fanning them, although they must stop fanning when Taliban troops pay a surprise visit, to make the women have their faces covered, etc. For me, the hopelessness of fanning dying patients mirrored the later hopelessness of the little girl, as her wretched predicament is relentlessly exacerbated... Soon after the scene with the oxygen tanks, there is a scene in which the little girl's beautiful long hair is cut, so she can imitate a little boy more effectively. After her haircut, she gathers up some of her shorn locks, and plants them in a flowerpot, as if hoping they might grow again. She even takes an IV drip apparatus from the hospital, to ensure a steady water supply to her hair (?!). How precious her lost, burgeoning womanly beauty has become, when she must co-opt the incredibly rare supplies of an underfunded hospital into her own hopeless effort to grow back her own hair, in a dirty little flowerpot.

Long segments of the film are shot in a discomfitting, on-again-off-again, stop-action slow motion. I don't know the proper term for this effect, if there is one, but to me the effect was disturbing and dreamlike. It was a little like walking underwater, in that everything seemed oddly slowed down and surreal.

At times the soundtrack is a few seconds out of synch with the images. This is a little disconcerting, but it's probably not so bad if you're prepared for it. So, just brace yourself.

Little Osama is just miserable and hopeless throughout this entire film. She is not a fiesty heroine, but a wretched little girl who never wanted to play the part she must play. All she wants to do is jump rope, like a normal little girl.

This film made me think about what forces might exist in our own society, which may harm women's spirits, and women's lives. We have nothing, of course, to compare with the horrendous Taliban oppression depicted here. Still, it never hurts to be on guard. I hope that this film inspires you to adapt a similarly thoughtful attitude, whoever reads this.

Another reviewer, in a review posted here on October 13, 2004, mentioned that this film is reminiscent of post WWII Italian neo-realist cinema. If you'd like to experience what he's talking about, see if you can find Vittorio de Sica's "Miracle in Milan," (1951) or "The Bicycle Thief," (1948), also by Vittorio de Sica.

Marina Golbahari is the name of the little girl who played the title role, Osama. In my personal opinion, Marina is a strong candidate to be the next Sharbat Gula of Afghanistan, that is to say, the new face of young Afghan women. Sharbat Gula was the girl with the arrestingly wild green eyes, and the haunted face, who appeared on the June, 1985 cover of "National Geographic." The photo became very famous, but no one knew who the young woman was. In 2002 the photographer, Steve McCurry, rediscovered Sharbat in a remote region of Afghanistan, and the story made international headlines. But the point is, young Marina could well become the next Sharbat Gula. Let us hope that she may use whatever power this could bring to her in a productive way. And if you, whoever reads this, would like to channel your energy from viewing this film, into a productive vein, I would like to recommend that you go to your favorite search engine, and google the phrase "Iniative to Educate Afghan Women."