| 100 |
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.
|
| 100 |
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Superb performances from a nonprofessional cast. It's gripping, timely, and revealing.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
A heartbreaking, powerful drama.
|
| 100 |
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.
|
| 100 |
The New Yorker
David Denby
The movie is an outright miracle. [8 March 2004, p. 92]
|
| 91 |
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.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Although it's a drama, Osama feels like urgent documentary.
|
| 90 |
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.
|
| 89 |
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.
|
| 88 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
It's a feminist nightmare, the world brought to life -- in hard-hitting documentary style.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
Mike Clark
A smooth mix of humanism and keen filmmaking instincts.
|
| 88 |
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.
|
| 88 |
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Osama works simply as the story of one unlucky young girl.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
Newsweek
David Ansen
The rage and sadness behind this film -- the first from Afghanistan since the Taliban's fall -- is matched by its artistry.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
Manohla Dargis
Raw and wretchedly current, it is a story that packs a cruel emotional wallop.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
Its sluggish, amateur-Kiarostami character would be off-putting if the material weren't so powerful.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
That it is such a powerful and indeed beautiful film is simply extraordinary.
|
| 75 |
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.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
A harrowing depiction of a woman's plight under the Taliban.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
You watch the movie with an ongoing feeling of dread, and it's not a feeling that ever dissipates.
|
| 75 |
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.
|
| 70 |
Chicago Reader
Reece Pendleton
Compelling despite an almost complete lack of subtlety.
|
| 70 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Michael Rechtshaffen
Ends up being of greater historical significance than of any lasting artistic merit.
|
| 67 |
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.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
Rough around the edges, but effectively presents the quandary of women during the repressive religious regime.
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