OSAMA (2003)

There’s something bordering on obscene that a film dealing with such violence, appalling socio-politico/ religious situations and hopeless lives should be so strikingly beautiful in form, color, texture & technique, but director Siddiq Barmak knows that beauty may be found in the most hellish of places. Osama is the only child of a widowed mother and grandmother. She’s passing as a boy to secure a pittance of a position when she finds herself forced into a Taliban school for the town’s male children. Found out, she is spared stoning only through the sexual interest of a powerful local mullah. Enthralling and horrifying.