Osama Critic Reviews

A heartbreaking, powerful drama.Read the full review

The movie is a rare uncensored postcard from a ruined place, a document at once depressing and hideously beautiful that sketches the real hardships of trampled people -- specifically women -- with authority and compelling simplicity. Read the full review

Osama's unvarnished vulnerability, along with the director's combination of tough-mindedness and lyricism, prevents the movie from becoming at all sentimental; instead, it is beautiful, thoughtful and almost unbearably sad. Read the full review

Although it's a drama, Osama feels like urgent documentary.Read the full review

Osama works simply as the story of one unlucky young girl. Read the full review

A smooth mix of humanism and keen filmmaking instincts.Read the full review

Brave dissenting Islamic filmmakers are risking their lives to tell the story of the persecution of women, and it is a story worth knowing, and mourning.Read the full review

Effective as a drama as it spirals Golbahari deeper into her nightmarish world, Osama is similarly powerful as a fictionalized account of the Taliban's obscene wish for a world where the stringent enforcement of religious laws took the place of instinctual human kindness. Read the full review

Apart from its historical interest, this tragic tale of religious extremism and misogyny is a very good film able to catch audiences up emotionally.Read the full review