Siddiq Barmak: a biography

Early life in the Panjshir Valley

Siddiq Barmak was born on 7 September 1962 in Panjshir, the steep river valley northeast of Kabul. In the decades after his birth the valley became known far beyond Afghanistan as a center of armed resistance, first against the Soviet army in the 1980s and later against the Taliban.

Barmak grew up as Afghan cinema was finding its feet. Afghan Film, the state film organization, was founded in Kabul in 1968, and Kabul's movie theaters showed a mix of Indian, Iranian, Soviet and Afghan productions. That environment shaped a young man who would later run the same organization.

Film school in Moscow

Barmak studied film directing at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, known as VGIK, in Moscow, the oldest film school in the world. He completed a master's degree in cinema direction in 1987. His early films as a director date from these years: Divar (1984), Circle (1985) and Bigana (1987).

VGIK gave him a grounding in the European and Soviet traditions of realist filmmaking. Its influence is visible in Osama, which relies on long silences, natural light and faces rather than dialogue to carry its story.

War years and the leadership of Afghan Film

According to a profile published by ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Barmak returned to Afghanistan in 1987 and in 1989 joined the mujahideen in the north of the country. After a period in Pakistan he came back to Kabul in 1992, where he became director of Afghan Film, the state production company and film library.

Those were years of civil war in the capital. Running a film institution meant protecting equipment, staff and an archive of irreplaceable negatives while the city was shelled. In 1995 he received a screenwriting credit on Uruj.

Exile under the Taliban

When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 they banned cinema, television and most images of living beings. Barmak left for Pakistan and then joined the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud in the north, filming combat scenes with a video camera. ZKM later screened his film The Invasion File (1997) from this period.

In Kabul the Taliban burned the films they could find. Barmak has said that about 2,600 films from the national archive were destroyed, while colleagues at the institute hid original reels under floorboards and on roofs to save them. The story of that rescue is told in the documentary A Flickering Truth (2015).

Return to Kabul and the Afghan Children Education Movement

After the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001, Barmak returned to Kabul and resumed his post at the head of Afghan Film. He also became director of the Afghan Children Education Movement (ACEM), an organization founded by the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. ACEM worked on literacy, culture and the arts, and trained young Afghans as actors and filmmakers.

Makhmalbaf, whose film Kandahar (2001) had put Afghanistan on screens around the world, gave Barmak creative and financial support for his first feature.

Osama (2003)

Barmak shot Osama in Kabul between June 2002 and March 2003 on a budget of about US$46,000. The story came from a newspaper report he read in Peshawar about a girl who disguised herself as a boy. He cast untrained actors found on the street, among them Marina Golbahari in the title role, and let much of the dialogue come from improvisation.

The film premiered at Cannes on 20 May 2003, received a special mention for the Caméra d'Or and went on to win the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in January 2004. It earned close to US$3.9 million worldwide, and as of 2018 it was the highest grossing Afghan film.

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

Opium War (2008)

For his second feature Barmak turned to black comedy. Opium War follows two American soldiers stranded after a helicopter crash and the Afghan family of poppy farmers they meet. To film it he obtained permission to grow a real poppy field, which eradication teams twice tried to destroy. The film won the Golden Marc'Aurelio critics' award for best film at the Rome Film Festival in October 2008 and was chosen as Afghanistan's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Producer and mentor

Alongside his own films, Barmak has used his standing to help other directors. He was a coproducer of Atiq Rahimi's Earth and Ashes (2004), executive producer of Kurbani (2004) and Neighbor (2009), and producer of Apple from Paradise (2008). See the complete filmography for all credits.

His approach to cinema

Across interviews, a few ideas recur. Barmak prefers untrained performers, especially children, because he believes they carry the truth of what Afghans have lived through. He distrusts false hope: he removed a hopeful ending from Osama because, in his words, it felt like lying. And he sees Afghanistan's wars as part of a larger story that outsiders often misunderstand.

“They don't know Afghanistan; there is a lack of knowledge about the country.”

He has also criticized the dominance of spectacle in world cinema, arguing for films grounded in human experience.

Awards and honors

• Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, for Osama (2004)
• Special Mention for the Caméra d'Or, Cannes Film Festival, for Osama (2003)
• UNESCO Fellini Silver Medal, for Osama (2003)
• Sutherland Trophy, London Film Festival, for Osama (2003)
• Golden Marc'Aurelio Critics' Award for Best Film, Rome Film Festival, for Opium War (2008)