Osama

Osama (2004)

To save her family a girl must become a boy

After the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the restriction of women in public life, a preteen girl is forced to masquerade as a boy in order to find work to support her mother and grandmother.

Date of release
2004-03-24
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (137)
Runtime
1h 23m
Genres
Drama
Director
Siddiq Barmak

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Osama is a 2003 drama film made in Afghanistan by Siddiq Barmak. The film follows a preteen girl living in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime who disguises herself as a boy, Osama, to support her family. It was the first film to be shot entirely in Afghanistan since 1996, when the Taliban regime banned the creation of all films. As of 2018, the film was the highest-grossing Afghan film of all time. The film is an international co-production of companies in Afghanistan, the Netherlands, Japan, Ireland, and Iran.

Production

Siddiq Barmak's inspiration was found in a news story he read while in Peshawar, Pakistan. The paper told the story of a girl who had dressed as a boy to attend school but was eventually discovered by the Taliban. Barmak would go on to add elements of other stories that were shared with him by people who had lived in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, culminating with the story of the film.

The film was shot on location in Kabul. Work began in June 2002 and was completed in March 2003 with a budget of approximately $46,000. All the actors in the film are amateurs found by the director on the streets of Kabul. Much of the dialogue was improvised by the actors.

Osama was originally titled Rainbow and ended on a hopeful note, with Osama passing under a rainbow and gaining her freedom. As time went on, Barmak grew dissatisfied with the ending, describing it as unrealistic for post-war Afghanistan. He changed the ending and title to reflect his feeling that Afghan women were still not truly free at the time he made the film.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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