Rent it. Buy it.
Added 7/20/2009
The title might suggest that this film is about Osama bin Laden, but it's not. This is an amazing story about a young girl in very difficult circumstances. It's not an easy film to watch, and it raises some very serious questions about the plight of widows, women and children in a fundamentalist environment. Bono has been quoted as saying something to the effect that faith isn't real without social justice. This film will challenge you in new ways to think about faith and religion and power, authority and social justice. Please see it. Osama was the first film shot in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. I strongly recommend it. Rent it and it will change your world view and perhaps your life. Buy it and you can share it with others.
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If you seek to understand...
Added 9/22/2008
Like another reviewer, I cried while watching this film. I knew the premise, and suspected what the ending would hold, but watched it anyway, for the sake of understanding. This is a film which cries out to be seen by women around the world. It is beyond my comprehension that now, in 2008, after all that women have endured, some of us are still dominated and brutalized by men. Yes, "it's a cultural thing," but that makes it no less wrong. I encourage all women to watch this film, to learn and understand, and to speak up for those whose weeping goes unheard. I also strongly recommend Khaled Hosseini's book, A Thousand Splendid Suns.
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Dull and predictable
Added 9/15/2008
Osama is touted as the first film made in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, and it was shot in Kabul. That should be a warning. Works of art that are touted as the first this or that tend to be bad, their only distinction being their chronological primacy. Such was the case with the atrocious Eskimo film of a few years back called Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. In a sense, Osama is merely an Afghani Atanarjuat. The story is virtually non-existent, save that the Taliban is bad, evil, etc. Can you say duh? Aside from that there is little else. The whole film by director Siddiq Barmak is a mess, the acting- all done with `real people' shows why that fact is manifest, and the whole thing is merely a Right Wing screed- as much a propaganda film for that extreme of Americana as The Motorcycle Diaries was for the Left.... Unfortunately, the film never takes a stand politically, its screenplay is at a junior high school level, with some absurd symbolism- such as Osama jumping rope in prison, that is as hermetic as can be, unless we are to believe that this is the level of rebellion and hatred the Afghani populace can muster? The only good thing is that the film is relatively short- only 82 minutes. The cinematography by Ebrahim Ghafori never enthralls, despite the fantastic landscape of the tale, and the musical scoring, by Mohamhad Reza Darvishi, is standard issue quasi-Arabic stuff that gives absolutely no emotional cues, nor does anything to heighten nor enlighten what is seen.
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Stunning and Depressing
Added 7/25/2008
Brilliant movie with a depressing ending. Don't buy it if sad movies make you depressed.
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Last night I saw one of the most moving videos I have ever seen, "Osama." It is the true story of a 12 year old girl living in Afghanistan during the Taliban. Incredibly well acted with amazing cinematography and filmed in Kabul, the little girl had to become a "boy" in order to save from starving her mother and grandmother.
Her father was deed and she had no male relatives. Taliban law did not allow a female to go outdoors without a family member male escort. Women were also banned from working. So she and her mom and grandmother were starving. Mom gets a great idea to dress her daughter as a boy so she could go outside escorted by her "male" relative. And so the harrowing on-the-edge-of-your-chair saga takes off.
The movie was funded by Iran per the movie's web site. Yet, the producer was still allowed to portray the Taliban in their agonizing Shaira law brutality to all and their almost hatred toward females.
The dialogue is in Pashtun (I guess) with English subtitles.
If the "we are seizing you boy for forced indoctrination into Taliban Islam" and the treatment of women in the movie under the Taliban are any where near the reality of Sharia law, we all should be terrified of this application of Islam.
Great movie.
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