Osama (2003)

What Osama is about

Kabul, in the years of Taliban rule. A girl of about twelve lives with her mother and grandmother. The men of the family have died in Afghanistan's wars, and women are forbidden to work: the mother has lost her job at a hospital after its funding was cut. Without a man to earn for them, the family faces hunger.

So the women take a desperate decision. They cut the girl's hair, dress her as a boy and send her to work for a sympathetic milkman. Before she goes, she plants a lock of her cut hair in a flowerpot. Only the milkman and a street boy named Espandi, who gives her the name Osama, know her secret.

Then the Taliban round up the local boys and send them to a madrasa for religious and military instruction. Every lesson on ritual washing, every game in the yard and every glance from the older boys becomes a threat. The film follows her as the disguise grows harder to keep.

A news story from Peshawar

Barmak found the idea in a newspaper report he read in Peshawar, Pakistan, about a girl who had disguised herself as a boy in order to go to school under the Taliban. He combined it with accounts from people who had lived through those years in Kabul, and changed one crucial element.

“I made the mission of the little girl in the film to get a job rather than to go to school.”

The change moves the story from aspiration to survival. The girl is not fighting for an education but for bread, which makes the stakes starker and the film harder to watch.

A cast found on the streets of Kabul

None of the actors had worked in film before. Barmak found them in the streets of Kabul, and much of the dialogue grew out of their own improvisation. Marina Golbahari, who plays the title role, was a child begging in the city when he cast her. Her performance won the Best Young Actor award at the Molodist festival in Kyiv and Best Actress at Cinemanila. You can read more about her life on our page about women in Afghan cinema.

“My opinion is that children especially hold a big part of the truth of all these disasters.”

From Rainbow to Osama: the changed ending

The project was first called Rainbow, and its first ending was hopeful: the girl passing under a rainbow and out into freedom, echoing an old tale that anyone who walks under a rainbow can change their fate. Barmak rewrote both the title and the ending, calling the original unrealistic for Afghanistan after the war.

“It felt like lying, it wasn't part of myself.”

Filming in Kabul

Shooting took place in Kabul from June 2002 to March 2003, with a budget of about US$46,000. Osama was the first film shot entirely in Afghanistan since the Taliban banned filmmaking in 1996. It was an international coproduction between Afghanistan, the Netherlands, Japan, Ireland and Iran, produced by Barmak Film with NHK and Swipe Films, and the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf gave Barmak creative and financial support.

Barmak wrote, directed and edited the film himself. Ebrahim Ghafori was the cinematographer and Mohammad Reza Darvishi composed the score.

Awards and recognition

Osama premiered in the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival on 20 May 2003 and went on to one of the strongest festival runs of any Afghan film.

• Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film (2004)
• Cannes Film Festival 2003: Special Mention for the Caméra d'Or, plus the Cannes Junior Award and the AFCAE Award
• UNESCO Fellini Silver Medal (2003)
• London Film Festival: Sutherland Trophy (2003)
• Busan International Film Festival: PSB Audience Award (2003)
• Valladolid International Film Festival: Golden Spike (2003)
• Molodist International Film Festival, Kyiv: Best Film, and Best Young Actor for Marina Golbahari (2003)
• Cinemanila International Film Festival: Best Actress for Marina Golbahari

How critics received it

Reviews were overwhelmingly positive. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 96 percent approval rating from 100 reviews, with a consensus that calls it “bitterly honest, deeply disturbing, and utterly worth watching.” On Metacritic it scores 83 out of 100, indicating universal acclaim from 35 critics.

Commercially it was a remarkable success for so small a production. It grossed close to US$3.9 million worldwide, roughly 85 times its budget, and as of 2018 it was the highest grossing Afghan film ever made.

Themes to watch for

• Disguise as survival. The haircut is not an adventure but an act of necessity, and the film never lets the viewer forget the price of being caught. We compare this disguise with later screen heroines, from The Breadwinner to Ms. Marvel, in Secret identities.
• The lock of hair. The hair planted in a flowerpot is the girl's one private act of hope, a small garden of the self she has had to hide.
• Silence and looking. Much of the story is told through faces and glances rather than words, a choice that suits a world in which speaking is dangerous.
• Children as witnesses. Barmak believed that children carry the truth of Afghanistan's disasters, and he built the film around their faces.
• No false comfort. The removal of the rainbow ending is the film's moral center: Barmak refused to promise a freedom that Afghan women did not yet have.

Where to watch Osama

Osama was distributed in many countries on release and has since appeared on DVD and on various streaming and rental services. Availability changes by region, so check licensed services in your country or a library with a world cinema collection.