Osama

Osama was the first feature film made in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, and it is a document of what that regime meant for the country's women. Siddiq Barmak, who had been making films in secret throughout the Taliban years, tells the story of a 12-year-old girl (Marina Golbahari, herself a real beggar Barmak discovered on the streets of Kabul) who is forced by her mother to cut her hair and pose as a boy — because under Taliban rule, a house without a man has no right to food, work, or movement.

The girl is given the name "Osama" and sent to a madrassa, where she lives in constant terror of discovery. The film was shot on location in Kabul with non-professional actors, many of whom had lived through the events depicted. The result is less a movie than a testimony — raw, urgent, and devastating.

Golbahari's face, wide-eyed and silent, carries the film. In one scene, she watches the Taliban execute a woman in a stadium and her expression communicates something no dialogue could: the shock of a child realizing that the world considers her life worthless.