Chronicles the true story of a young girl in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan who must disguise herself as a boy to save her family from starvation. The first feature film made in Afghanistan in the post-Taliban era.
This meticulous inquiry into the ways that ideological evil can infect, and ultimately destroy, the intimacies and small pleasures of daily life is beautiful, thoughtful, and almost unbearably sad. A widowed grandmother, mother, and daughter are facing starvation. Since the foreign doctors have been driven away, the mother's employment at the hospital ends. Thus the young daughter, at the risk of being discovered and killed, masquerades as a boy in order to earn money--a necessity since they cannot leave the house without a male escort. Snatched away from her job and sent to be indoctrinated by the Taliban, it is just a matter of time before she is given away. The Taliban's obscene wish for a world where the stringent enforcement of religious laws takes the place of human kindness is on full display, and as they employ their sadistic holy laws in the name of God, the only human response is horror.