Osama

In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where the lives of girls and women are rigidly controlled, a desperate widow cuts her 12-year-old daughter's hair, dresses her in boy's clothes, and sends her out into the city so she can work to support her mother and grandmother. Filmmaker Siddiq Barmak, a resident of Kabul who spent the Taliban years in exile in Pakistan, returned home after the fall of that theocratic regime to make this astonishing feature film debut. "Osama" (Marina Golbahari), as the girl is called, lives in terror of being discovered, and it's through her eyes that we witness, with ever increasing anger, the brutality, rage, and pitilessness of the ruling religious clerics...as well as the kindness of some men towards Afghan women under the regime. Barmak, in the first Afghan film made since the overthrow of the Taliban, gives us vistas of stark beauty in this beaten-up landscape, a desolate backdrop for the downtrodden faces of his human palette. As a harrowing portrait of survival, this would be an unforgettable film in and of itself, but combined with the knowledge that not much has changed since the fall of the Taliban and the subsequent rise of the warlords, this becomes unimaginably haunting: Osama isn't just a current affairs primer, it's a universal illustration of the horrors that weak men perpetrate on others using religion as a weapon of intolerance. Highly recommended. [Note: DVD extras include a 22-minute interview with filmmaker Siddiq Barmak titled “Sharing Hope and Freedom,” and trailers. Bottom line: a small extras package for a small but powerful film.] (M. Johanson)