A small movie with a purposefully misleading title and a production budget of only $46,000 might well be one of the most topical political statements of our time: a tale of women’s struggle for freedom from brutal oppression by the Taliban.
The title of the film is Osama. In 2003, when the movie was shot, Osama bin Laden was the world’s most infamous fugitive. But the movie has nothing directly to do with him. As Afghan director Siddiq Barmak revealed in a conversation with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, he chose this name because “I wanted to draw attention to the film and its subject.”
The whole film owes its existence to such makeshift maneuvering by Barmak. He got the idea from a newspaper story he read while in Peshawar, Pakistan, and went with it (of all places) to Iran, where he asked Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf to lend him money and his Arriflex camera, and started shooting in Kabul, Afghanistan, without any professional actors, keeping much of their improvised dialogue in the film.

Some scenes are unforgettable. A grey-blue stream cascading down a hill in the city reveals itself as an eerie march of hundreds of faceless women in burqas, screaming, “We want to work. We are widows. We are hungry.” Suddenly, shouts of warning: “The Taliban are coming!” Water cannons, arrests. Some women are locked up in cages like livestock.
In the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, women must completely cover themselves and are banned from working in public. The tragic consequence of such oppression is the subject of this film.

A family of three generations is reduced to a girl, her mother, and her grandmother; all the men were killed during the Soviet invasion. The mother supports the family for a period of time working in a hospital. After the Taliban cut the funds for the hospital, leaving the family with no more money, the women decide, in an act of desperation, to cut the girl’s hair, dress her as a boy, and send her to work. The girl reluctantly agrees, despite her very real fear that the Taliban will kill her if they discover her disguise.
One day, all the local boys her age are picked up and locked in a madrasa, a boarding school for religious and military indoctrination. The girl, disguised as a boy named Osama, is among them. A friend who knows her true gender tries to protect her, but eventually, the truth can no longer be concealed: During outdoor activities with all the boys, the girl’s first menstruation becomes visible to everyone around. Her secret out, she is arrested instantly. A jury of old Taliban men then assembles to preside over her life or death.

In his conversation with the HFPA, Barmak pointed out that he does not consider his film anti-Islam, but rather anti-Taliban and pro-women’s rights. In 2004, the HFPA awarded Osama the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film (now Best Non-English Language Film).