Daily Magazine
Posted on Wed, Feb. 25, 2004

An Afghan movie recounts Taliban repression
By Aseem Chabra
For The Inquirer

A year ago, Afghan director Siddiq Barmak was scouting for locations in Kabul for his first feature film, Osama. Barmak found a house that he wanted to use and agreed to pay the owner $50 - a substantial sum in that war-torn, impoverished country. But when Barmak's crew arrived, the owner's father accosted them.

"He asked me whether I was a Muslim man and said that there was a special section in the Koran that forbids pictures [movies]," Barmak recounted recently from the Regency Hotel in midtown Manhattan. "I said to him, 'Where is it written? Show me. I have read the Koran, too.' "

The old man confessed he was illiterate. Barmak offered $100 to use the house, and the old man agreed. "And I said to him, 'You sold your God for $100,' " Barmak said.

Barmak related this story to make a point: The Taliban regime, which enforced the most primitive interpretation of Islam, collapsed nearly two years ago, but values and attitudes are largely unchanged.

Since the attack on Afghanistan by American forces, focus has shifted to the war on Iraq and the global fight against terrorism. But Taliban influences remain.

Last month's Golden Globe foreign-film winner, Osama is the first feature-length film to be made in the post-Taliban Afghanistan. It also received a special mention at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. It opens Friday in Philadelphia-area theaters.

Even George W. Bush gave the movie his presidential thumb up: "You ought to see the movie Osama," he said Monday in a speech to the National Governors Association. "It's an interesting movie. It talks about what it was like to be a woman in Afghanistan during the Taliban era."

Set during the height of the Taliban rule, Osama is a tragic story of a young Afghan girl in Kabul (beautifully acted by Marina Golbahari, whom Barmak found begging on a street in the city). The girl is forced to cut her hair short and pose as a boy so she can earn money at a tea stall and support her mother and grandmother. When her identity is revealed, the child is tried by a Taliban-style Islamic court and given away as a bride to an old mullah.

"Marriages of young girls to older men happened before the Taliban came to power, during the time when the Taliban were in power, and continue to happen now that they are gone," said Masuda Sultan, program director for Women for Afghan Women, a New York-based organization.

"Everyone in the U.S. knows about the Taliban," Sultan added, "but the film gives a heart-pounding feeling of what it would be like to live that experience, not just intellectually, but emotionally."

Barmak, 41, originally called the project Rainbow, planning a bright and a cheerful ending for his film. "But that was a big lie, a very stupid lie," Barmak said.

He then found the title of the film in the story itself. A group of boys teases the child (now dressed as a boy) that she is actually a girl. One boy who knows her true identity declares: "He is a boy. His name is Osama."

"He comes up with the name, because this name creates a scare, a fear," Barmak said. "This is a film about horror, and who was at the heart of this horror? Osama bin Laden. So I selected this title, because everyone loses their identity in the film."

In April 2002, Barmak narrated the plot of Osama to the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Kandahar).

"I told him about my desire to revive Afghan cinema," said Barmak, who now heads the Afghan Film Organization. "He was so moved by this story he promised me to find financial resources for the film."

Afghanistan has hardly any filmmaking tradition; the country has produced about 40 films in the last 100 years. In comparison, its neighbor India has a prolific industry that churns out an average of three films a day.

Makhmalbaf connected Barmak with three international film production houses - from Ireland, France and Japan. He also helped Barmak raise funds through Iran's Ministry of Culture and his own production company. Makhmalbaf's cinematographer Ebrahim Ghafuri shot Osama, and the film was edited in Tehran.

The total cost to produce Osama was slightly more than $300,000. "We are a poor country," Barmak said. "That is very expensive for us in Afghanistan."

Born in Kabul, the soft-spoken Barmak is a son of a former police officer. After the Soviet invasion in the late-1970s, his father had to flee the country, but even though Barmak opposed the Soviets, he accepted a scholarship to attend a film school in Moscow. There he was introduced to the works of Soviet filmmakers Andre Tarkovsky and Tengiz Abuladze; Barmak considers them, along with Iranian giants Abbas Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf, the greatest influences on his filmmaking.

Barmak returned to Afghanistan, joined the mujaheddin - the anti-Soviet forces - and for a few years worked close to Ahmed Shah Massoud, the charismatic leader of the Northern Alliance. When Taliban forces took control, Barmak went into a forced exile in Peshawar, in northwestern Pakistan. After the fall of the Taliban regime, he returned to Kabul.

Last year, Osama had its first and only showing in Afghanistan, in a theater in Kabul, where it was well-received. "Unfortunately we don't have movie theaters in other parts of the country," Barmak said. "They were destroyed by the Taliban."

Some theaters were recently rehabilitated in the northern provinces of the country, and the film will see a larger release on March 21, the Afghan new year's day.