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Osama
EMAILPRINTUnited Artists / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corporation
Universal acclaim
Based on 35 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 13 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by: Siddiq Barmak
Directed by: Siddiq Barmak
Release Date:
Theatrical: February 6, 2004
DVD: April 27, 2004
Running Time: 82 minutes, Color
Origin: Afghanistan / Japan / Ireland
Language(s): Pashtu (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for mature thematic elements
Starring Marina Golbahari, Arif Herati, Zubaida Sahar, Gol Rahman Ghorbandi, Mohamad Haref Harati, Mohamad Nader Khadjeh, Khwaja Nader, and Hamida Refah
A 12-year-old Afghan girl and her mother lose their jobs when the Taliban closes the hospital where they work. Feeling she has no choice, the mother disguises her daughter as a boy. Now called Osama, the girl embarks on a terrifying and confusing journey as she tries to keep the Taliban from finding out her true identity. (United Artists)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The movie is a rare uncensored postcard from a ruined place, a document at once depressing and hideously beautiful that sketches the real hardships of trampled people -- specifically women -- with authority and compelling simplicity.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Superb performances from a nonprofessional cast. It's gripping, timely, and revealing.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
We are certainly entitled to marvel at its very existence, but that isn't enough. The work itself is extraordinary.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
The movie is an outright miracle. [8 March 2004, p. 92]
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Gorgeous and saddening, Osama makes the human-scale claim for the overthrow of governments ruled by the iron hand of religious fundamentalism far more persuasively than any of the rhetoric coming out of the White House or No. 10 Downing St.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Although it's a drama, Osama feels like urgent documentary.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
Osama's unvarnished vulnerability, along with the director's combination of tough-mindedness and lyricism, prevents the movie from becoming at all sentimental; instead, it is beautiful, thoughtful and almost unbearably sad.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Osama begins in fear and ends in terror. In between there's all manner of hopelessness, deprivation, and death, which is to say that as the first film to come out of a post-Taliban Afghanistan, it's practically a documentary.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
It's a feminist nightmare, the world brought to life -- in hard-hitting documentary style.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Brave dissenting Islamic filmmakers are risking their lives to tell the story of the persecution of women, and it is a story worth knowing, and mourning.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
In its small, achingly beautiful way, this is the lesson that Osama teaches us: When one human being suffers, it is all of us who share her pain.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
In dramatic terms, Osama couldn't be much simpler. The director is aiming for a sort of tone poem of repression, the girl robbed first of her childhood, then of her burgeoning womanhood.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
The rage and sadness behind this film -- the first from Afghanistan since the Taliban's fall -- is matched by its artistry.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Melissa Levine
For the most part the film is a miracle of accomplishment, elegant and bold and artful in a world devoid of resources.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
Raw and wretchedly current, it is a story that packs a cruel emotional wallop.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Rarely has there been so obscenely precise a depiction of ravaged innocence. This young girl has nothing to live for--and an entire life ahead of her in which to live it.
Read Full Review >Variety Deborah Young
Apart from its historical interest, this tragic tale of religious extremism and misogyny is a very good film able to catch audiences up emotionally.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Effective as a drama as it spirals Golbahari deeper into her nightmarish world, Osama is similarly powerful as a fictionalized account of the Taliban's obscene wish for a world where the stringent enforcement of religious laws took the place of instinctual human kindness.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Its sluggish, amateur-Kiarostami character would be off-putting if the material weren't so powerful.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
At the center...lies the stunning Golbahari, a nonprofessional who recalls some of Bresson's most haunting model-actors in her intense, anguished grace.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
The film serves as a potent reminder of what conditions were like in Afghanistan before the U.S. bombing campaign ended the Taliban's reign of terror, and, as such, its timing couldn't be any better.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Recreates the Taliban era with chilling details and startling beauty, and follows its terrified heroine on a journey that no child should have to take.
Empire David Parkinson
The performances are credible, but set-pieces like the water-cannoning of a procession of burkha-clad protesters are also impeccably judged.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
That it is such a powerful and indeed beautiful film is simply extraordinary.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Marta Barber
In a cast of wonderful non-professional actors, unfortunately Osama is the weakest. But to be fair, Barmak focuses more on situations than on developing the characters.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
A harrowing depiction of a woman's plight under the Taliban.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Mark Caro
You watch the movie with an ongoing feeling of dread, and it's not a feeling that ever dissipates.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Obviously, this is no easy sell, but give writer-director Siddiq Barmak full credit for portraying his country's social catastrophe with restraint, concision and some real beauty.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Reece Pendleton
Compelling despite an almost complete lack of subtlety.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
Ends up being of greater historical significance than of any lasting artistic merit.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
There are too few surprises and even less subtlety in the telling. We can only sit and wait for the next bomb to drop on this poor exploited girl.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Rough around the edges, but effectively presents the quandary of women during the repressive religious regime.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.3 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Mud gave it a0:
women used to experience safety and freedom in the time of taliban and the regime was not6 evil as being presented in the western media to justify the killing of innocent people in Afghanistan by America after they themselves conducted the twin tower blasts see loose change to know the truth.
A very good movie I thought. Powerful and disturbing at times. American women and whining kids here who think they have it bad should see this movie. I sincerely hope Marina Golbahari realizes her dream of being an actress. She was excellent. A very good movie.
Dan gave it a9:
Beautiful, elegant, unflinching, profound.
dan l. gave it a9:
The ending is the best part even tho ppl said they didnt like it.
Niall M. gave it an8:
The winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Film, Osama is a heartbreaking depiction of life under the brutal Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Filmed over the course of year, this spare and artfully told drama from Siddiq Barmak has a gritty authenticity reminiscent of the Italian neo-realist films of Vittorio De Sica (The Bicycle Thief) and Roberto Rossellini (Open City). A cast of non-professionals, many of whom Barmak discovered on the street or in refugee camps, gives uniformly fine performances in a profoundly moving story that demonstrates the power of art to enlighten and entertain. Shot on location in the bombed-out streets of Kabul, Osama puts a very human face on the Taliban's oppression of women. A young girl (the expressive Marina Golhahari) lives with her widowed mother (Zubaida Sahar) and grandmother in abject poverty. Forbidden to leave the house without a male escort, the girl's mother cuts her daughter's hair so she can pass as a boy. Although she's terrified of being exposed, the young girl goes to work for a kindly shopkeeper who fought alongside her late fath r against the Soviets. Unfortunately, the girl's delicate features and ignorance of religious custom arouse the suspicions of a Taliban leader. He forces her to attend a religious school/Taliban training camp, where she struggles to blend in with the other boys. A street urchin (Aref Herati) who knows her secret becomes her protector. To that end, he introduces her as Osama, but no matter how hard she tries to pass as male, she is ultimately betrayed by her own physiology. While Osama is Barmak's first film, it feels like the work of an experienced director who knows that "less is more." Barmak doesn't linger over the horrors of life under the Taliban or milk the heroine's story for pathos. He tells the story simply and honestly, with refreshing economy (the film has a running time of only 82 minutes). Working with his gifted cinematographer Ebrahim Ghafuri, Barmak takes viewers deep into a world that most of us know only superficially from the nightly news. It's often difficult to watch—the sheer cruelty of the Taliban leaders is particularly disturbing—but Osama is a movie that needs to be seen. Over the last few years, several Middle Eastern films have won international acclaim for depicting the repression of women under Islamic law. Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi courted controversy with The Circle (2000), a heartfelt episodic drama that strongly critiques Iranian society. The Day I Became A Woman (2001) is a beautifully filmed exploration of women's lives during adolescence, adulthood, and old age. And like Osama, Kandahar (2001) depicts life under the Taliban. In this intense film, which was named 2001's best film by Time magazine, an Afghan journalist who fled the country for Canada returns to find her suicidal sister. Of course, not every Middle Eastern film paints such a grim portrait of women's lives; Panahi's The White Balloon (1995) is a charming urban fable about a little girl's attempts to buy a goldfish in a Teheran market. In one of the more glaring omissions from the list of Academy Award nominees, Osama was not nominated for Best Foreign-Language Film. Hopefully, this powerful film will find the audience it deserves.
Dennis P. gave it an 8:
More educational than entertaining. Experiencing the cruelty of the Taliban through the eyes of a 12 year old girl is difficult at times, but undeniably powerful.
Chad S. gave it an 8:
Did the extras, and even some of the (non-)actors with speaking parts, understand that a western, or enlightened audience would look at the treatment of women under Islamic law with disdain? When Osama is pardoned from being stoned, she is forgiven, and the flock, in response praise God, and miss the irony. Did the director tell the non-professional actors they were making an anti-Islamic, as well as an anti-Taliban movie? You've seen the girl disguise herself as a boy premise in disparate films such as "Mulan" and "The King of Masks", but given the context, our focus should be on the reality of Afghani women and not recycled screenwriting. Marina Golbahari looks like Hillary Swank as Brandon Teena as a pre-teen, and is very good. "Osama" is a little short, but by the time she arrives at her husband's house, believe me, you can't wait for the film to end.
The Wise King gave it a 9:
Essential viewing. A beautiful, sad film which elegantly portrays the suffering of the Afghans under Islamic fundamentalist rule. If anyone is confused about the motives of the evil theocratic barbarians who perpetrated mass murder on our soil on September 11, let them see this film.
