Osama

Starring: Marina Golbahari
Directed by: Siddiq Barmak

This shocking, brutal, stomach churning, story follows a young Afghani girl (Marina Golbahari) whose mother is forced to make a life-altering decision after the Taliban, during their heyday of power in Afghanistan, has closed the hospital where she works making them instantly destitute.

The regime has also banned women from even leaving their homes without a male escort.

Since the men are all dead in this small family, the mother has no choice but to disguise her daughter as a boy and set her to work. It's that or literally starve to death.

Naturally the young girl is bewildered - as well as her viewing audience - as she goes from one horrific situation to another while desperately trying to keep her female identity under wraps. In her hell-like homeland this Taliban doesn't exactly treat women equal. In fact the way women are treated, to a red-white-and-blue blooded American woman watching these images of relentless cruelty, seems (at first) ridiculously unbelievable. As you watch these women cower in fear and be driven indoors - punished by death should they dare to travel the streets without a man - your brain fights to remember this is a fact. This is not some new sci-fi drama an cable.

Then it really gets terrifying.

Osama, as she is named by a boy trying to save her life in one of her thousand hair raising close calls, is drafted into in the Taliban (read: physically dragged from her boy-working life in a captive situation and force to train within the regime). They, obviously, believe her to be a boy. But when she is discovered the results are far from the Hollywood endings we are use to. And in this case, beg for.

Osama is shocking and relentlessly blunt. The film is not a lighthearted look at another culture with a tinkling soundtrack to ease the blows. A friend who viewed Osama with me felt it was manipulative. I disagreed. I think the film ultimately reminds anyone (who is lucky enough not to be under a nutcase rule like that), that as we live our cushy lives, where the trauma of the day is which fast food establishment to stop at on the way home from the gym, other countries and lands are still struggling to move forward in the treatment of their citizens. If it takes an emotionally draining film to slap us to attention? So be it. Sorry, am I being a tad Susan Sarandon?

Of course there is a propaganda-ish side of Osama, in that anyone watching will understand why America is not a fan of the Taliban, but then remember this film shows how people are treated in many countries and in this case the director, Siddiq Barmak, happened to hone in on a villainous place we'd be more willing to react to with a passionate disgust - in my opinion.

Bluntly speaking? See this, but, be aware it's tough viewing; not for the squeamish. To think in this day - anywhere - in the world a woman can be treated this badly and it is accepted boggles the mind. But that's the Western mind, brought up equally and with a voice. Not a voice that has been stripped of rights, stripped of home, stripped of its being and humiliated till the soul is a shell like the women this film spotlights. Speaking of film…. it's amazing this film was even made. Osama is exposing, opinionated, frighteningly frank and an actual Afghani film. So there's hope for the future?

Snack recommendation: Tums and ginger ale

Blunt Aside: When you feel helpless, enraged, and sick to your stomach go here->
Admittedly it's an 'Oprah' page - but at least you know the organizations spotlighted are legit.