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.

FILMOGRAPHY

• Divar – (1984) director
• Circle – (1985) director
• Bigana – (1987) director
• Uruj – (1995) scipt writer
• Osama – (2003) director
• Kurbani – (2004) executive producer
• Earth and Ashes – (2004) co-producer
• Opium War – (2008) director
• Apple from Paradise (2008) – producer
• Neighbor (2009) executive producer

CONTACT

barmakfilm@gmail.com

Talking with Rivers
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Iran. 2023. 50 min

Talking with Rivers is a conversation between Iran and Afghanistan, two neighbouring countries that used to be one land. The two countries are now sharing their stories after they parted from each other, from the era of Soviet invasion to the civil war and the Taliban era, up to and including the rise and fall of America and the return of the Taliban.

MOHSEN MAKHMALBAF

Mohsen Makhmalbaf is an Iranian director, writer, producer. He is known as one of the most influential filmmakers and founders of the new wave of Iranian cinema in the world today.

During his career, Makhmalbaf has made numerous critically-acclaimed films including Salam Cinema (Cannes 1995), Time of love (Cannes 1995) Gabbeh (Cannes 1996), A Moment of Innocence (Locarno1996), The Silence (Venice 1998), Tales of Kish (Cannes 1999), Testing democracy (Venice 1999), Kandahar (Cannes 2001), Scream of the Ants (Montreal 2007), The President (Venice 2014) and The Night of Zayandeh-Rood (Venice 2017) …
He is the recipient of more than 60 international awards from some of the most prestigious film festivals across the world.
His film Kandahar has been chosen as one of the top 100 best movies of history of cinema by Times Magazine. And his film A Moment of Innocence has been selected as one of the top ten best films of the ’90s amongst the director of world international film festivals.
As a writer-director, Makhmalbaf has also published more than 30 books, many of which have been translated and published in many languages.

DIRECTOR,S NOTE

During the past 40 years, I have directed and produced ten feature and documentary films about Afghanistan. I have launched and completed dozens of cultural and educational projects in Afghanistan and for that matter, for years I lived in various times in different cities around Afghanistan, closely witnessing the contemporary history of Afghanistan and the lives of the people. In all these years I have felt that the world has forgotten Afghanistan and unaware of the sufferings of the Afghan people and those who intended to help but failed, had no concrete knowledge and notion of Afghan society. This film is an attempt to explain the complexities of this situation in a plain and intelligible language.

POSTER

CONTACT

may@makhmalbaf.com