Osama (Siddiq Barmak) Afghanistan |

Osama
Siddiq Barmak
Afghanistan. 2003. 83 min

A 12-year-old girl, her mother, and a girl have survived the repressed demonstrations launched by Afghan women at the beginning of Taliban regime. The girl and her mother work in a hospital and soon become aware that the Taliban have dismissed all the people working there and have closed its gate.
The Taliban make sure that no women can get out of their houses without a legal companion (without any member of their family). If they do so they will be punished.
To support the family, the girl’s mother, who has lost her job, decides together with the girl’s grandmother to change the appearance of the girl in order to look like a boy. This decision terrifies the girl. She is afraid of what will happen if the Taliban finds out that she is a girl.

SIDDIQ BARMAK

Siddiq Barmak (September 7, 1962) is an Afghan film director and producer. In 2004, Barmak won Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes for his first feature film, Osama. He received an M.A. degree in cinema direction from the Moscow Film Institute (VGIK) in 1987.

There is a stylistic echo in Osama featured in Afghan films by the Iranian Makhmalbaf dynasty. Barmak directed Osama with significant funding and assistance from Mohsen Makhmalbaf. The Iranian director invested in the film, lending Barmak his Arriflex camera and encouraging him to send the movie to international festivals, which eventually generated further funding from Japanese and Irish producers. Barmak received “UNESCO’s Fellini Silver Medal” for his drama, Osama, in 2003.

Barmak is also director of the Afghan Children Education Movement (ACEM), an association that promotes literacy, culture and the arts, which was also founded by Makhmalbaf. The school trains actors and directors for newly emerging Afghan cinema. Barmak is one of the celebrated figures in Persian cinema as well as the emerging cinema of Afghanistan.