the saddest film I've ever seen

Sometimes I get this weird urge to broaden my cultural horizons by watching a very exotically foreign movie. This time it was Osama - the first film made in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban rule. It tells the story of a twelve-year-old girl forced to dress up as a boy to keep her mother and grandmother from starving (all the men in the family had been killed, and women aren't allowed to work). I didn't think it would hit me so hard - after all, I had studied Islamic culture and was far from ignorant about what happened there in recent years. Still, to actually see it on film (and a very realistically made one at that) is a different thing altogether. "Heartbreaking" doesn't even begin to cover it. I feel like I've been crushed by a load of bricks. Just in case this actually encourages anyone to watch the movie (it is a very good movie - just not for the faint of heart), I am putting spoilers under the cut. ( Read more... )