Director: Siddiq Barmak
Cast: Marina Golbahari, Arif Herati, Zubaida Sahar, Mohammad Nadir Khwaja, Khwaja Nader
Osama is a 2003 Afghan drama film directed by Siddiq Barmak, marking the first feature film produced in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. Set during Taliban rule, it follows a twelve-year-old girl disguised as a boy to survive a regime that strips women of every right — including the right to exist in public.
What is Osama about?
In Kabul under Taliban control, a widowed mother and her daughter face destitution: women cannot work, and every male in their family has been lost to years of war. With no other option, the grandmother devises a desperate plan — the girl will cut her hair, dress as a boy, and enter the world as 'Osama.' She secures work at a small shop, moving cautiously through streets where discovery means death. A neighborhood boy notices the deception and holds the secret over her, adding new layers of danger to an already impossible existence. The film tracks her daily acts of concealment — each interaction a test, each moment of normalcy a small miracle — as the Taliban tighten their grip on the city around her.
The K-Time take
Barmak shot Osama on streets still scarred by war, with a cast of mostly non-professional actors, and that rawness gives the film an urgency no studio production could manufacture. The film works not through spectacle but through accumulation — the weight of small humiliations, small fears, and the unbearable ordinariness of survival under theocratic terror. Marina Golbahari's performance is a quiet revelation.
Cast & crew
Director Siddiq Barmak, a veteran Afghan filmmaker, drew on documentary instincts to shape this fiction debut. Lead Marina Golbahari was discovered on the streets of Kabul and had never acted before filming. Arif Herati plays the boy who holds the protagonist's secret, and Zubaida Sahar and Mohammad Nadir Khwaja round out the core ensemble.
Context & significance
For Persian-speaking viewers in the diaspora, Osama carries a particular weight. Farsi and Dari share deep linguistic and cultural roots, and the Afghanistan depicted here — a society suffocated by the Taliban — resonates with living memory across the wider Iranian world. The film arrived in 2003 as the first post-Taliban Afghan production, co-produced with Iranian and international partners, at a moment when the world was just beginning to see what ordinary Afghans had endured. It belongs to a lineage of austere, humanist Persian-language cinema — patient, ground-level, unsparing — that prioritizes witness over dramatization. Watching it is an act of solidarity with a story that echoes across borders.
Where & how to watch
Osama is available on K-Time with original Dari/Pashto audio. No Persian dubbing or Persian subtitles are included for this title. Stream it on the web, on your TV, or on your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, cancel anytime.